To-day, one more was brought out dead from the eight opposite houses, making twenty-five, and we know there are four more lying ill there. Our poor schoolmaster, who went in the caravan, is dead, and was buried in his tent.
_May 1._--The Lord has brought us all in safety to the beginning of another month, through the most trying period of my life; yet the Lord has every day filled our mouth with praise, and enabled us to see his preserving hand.
To-day, as I passed along the street, I saw numbers of dead bodies lying unburied, and the dogs eating with avidity the loathsome food. Oh! it made my very heart sink. The numbers of the dead can now be no longer ascertained, for most of the bodies are buried either in the houses or in the roads; yet amidst all this, the Lord suffers not the destroying angel to enter our dwelling; but we feel the Lord has commanded the man with the ink-horn to write us down to be spared, as this is one of the vials of God's wrath on his enemies.
_May 2._--We have heard nothing to-day to vary the general scene of our calamities; the intensity of this most desolating disease surpasses all thought. Numbers of families are altogether swept away; in numerous others, out of ten or twelve, only one, two, or three remain; but I hear of none, save our own, where death has not entered. Yet, while I bless and praise the Holy Name of our Lord, under whose wing alone we came here, and under whose wing alone we have trusted, the things my eyes have seen, and my ears heard, press upon my heart, and make me at times very sad; neither can I chase them from my mind. I can only look forward for comfort to that day, when the Lord himself will come to put an end to this dispensation of desolation, and introduce his own peace. Yea, come Lord Jesus, come quickly.
We have just heard melancholy tidings of another caravan, which endeavoured to escape into Persia from the plague, but has been forced back again by the Arabs, the floods, and the scarcity of provisions, and besides numbers among them have died daily of the plague, so still we can bless God we did not leave our present position by this last opportunity. Let us then again bless him for not allowing us to make haste.