About ten o’clock that night, I heard a noise of persons running in the street, and going to the Romerberg, found the water had risen, all at once, much higher, and was still rapidly increasing.  People were setting up torches and lengthening the rafts, which had been already formed.  The lower part of the city was a real Venice—­the streets were full of boats and people could even row about in their own houses; though it was not quite so bad as the flood in Georgia, where they went up stairs to bed in boats!  I went to the bridge.  Persons were calling around—­“The water! the water! it rises continually!” The river rushed through the arches, foaming and dashing with a noise like thunder, and the red light of the torches along the shore cost a flickering glare on the troubled waves.  It was then twenty-one feet above its usual level.  Men were busy all around, carrying boats and ladders to the places most threatened, or emptying cellars into which it was penetrating.  The sudden swelling was occasioned by the coming down of the floods from the mountains of Spessart.

Part of the upper quay cracked next morning and threatened to fall in, and one of the projecting piers of the bridge sunk away from the main body three or four inches.  In Sachsenhausen the desolation occasioned by the flood is absolutely frightful; several houses have fallen into total ruin.  All business was stopped for the day; the Exchange was even shut up.  As the city depends almost entirely on pumps for its supply of water, and these were filled with the flood, we have been drinking the muddy current of the Main ever since.  The damage to goods is very great.  The fair was stopped at once, and the loss in this respect alone, must be several millions of florins.  The water began to fall on the 1st, and has now sunk about ten feet, so that most of the houses are again released, though in a bad condition.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was sitting in my room, writing, I heard all at once an explosion like a cannon in the street, followed by loud and continued screams.  Looking out the window, I saw the people rushing by with goods in their arms, some wringing their hands and crying, others running in all directions.  Imagining that it was nothing less than the tumbling down of one of the old houses, we ran down and saw a store a few doors distant in flames.  The windows were bursting and flying out, and the mingled mass of smoke and red flame reached half way across the street.  We learned afterwards it was occasioned by the explosion of a jar of naphtha, which instantly enveloped the whole room in fire, the people barely escaping in time.  The persons who had booths near were standing still in despair, while the flames were beginning to touch their property.  A few butchers who first came up, did almost everything.  A fire engine arrived soon, but it was ten minutes before it began to play, and by that time the flames were coming out of the upper stories.  Then the supply