I was perfectly charmed to find I had so much, for I have been eating it and paying for my work with it and trading it for two years; it has been a perfect widow's cruse.
Coming home the clay gully was so high that the water came into the buckboard. Ruth didn't like it and pulled until she broke the harness, but we got out safely.
September 4.
All the roads we usually travel are impassable, the bridges under water or floating. The men go through a cart path which avoids the bridges, but it is a roundabout way and does not help me a bit, so I just plunge through the clay gully every day.
All the men are in despair. The entire rice crop is about four feet under water and there is very little hope of saving any. I have been so unhappy because I had not planted any rice and accused myself of supineness because I was afraid of going into debt to plant any, and now I am so filled with thanksgiving that I didn't, and feel that I was specially guided not to do it.
September 5.
Poor Gibbie is so determined not to work that he has broken the plough. I was very anxious to have land for turnips and rape prepared and Gibbie could only get out of it by breaking all three of the ploughs. Then I got him to mowing the hay, and he promptly broke the mowing machine.
The cause of these mishaps is Gibbie's sporting tastes. All the men on the place, who will not pay their rent, are over the river with guns making large bags of game of different sorts. The poor rabbits and other things having taken refuge on any knoll or stump and are easily shot as the water recedes.
I might as well give up any effort to have work done until the waters have entirely subsided. The damage from the freshet is wide-spread, but thank God! no loss of life or cattle.
September 6.