Sunday, March 2nd

The downpour continued the whole of last night of the degree of the hardest Irish shower. I lay awake trembling for the fate of four sod walls, hearing the rain pouring through the roof and dripping in puddles on the floor. But the worst was not seen till daylight in the morning. Then the half of our floor was a pool of water—the other half soft mud, almost ankle deep; and the water roaring fast in a stream past my bed to swell the pool that gathered under Henry's. The kitchen was a standing pool too, and rain still pouring heavy through the roof and underneath the walls mysteriously. We could not discover the cause of this undercurrent till afterwards. The men dug a drain through the kitchen, which let the standing water out of the house and caused a regular flow by a passage under the door-sill. Another hole was cut in page 140the side of the wall, and this let the water out from Henry's bed in a violent stream. A similar hole was cut in the other corner to let out the pool under Willy's bed. They then covered the kitchen floor with fern, which sopped up the wet a little. We lay in bed, knowing that there was no shelter to be had elsewhere, till breakfast time—I under an umbrella. After breakfast Henry and Hamilton got up, and got through the day somehow or other. I lay in bed the whole day, reading—the rain still pouring a torrent. I dined in the same way, in bed, and smoked a cigar comfortably enough with Wortley afterwards, in the same costume. Wortley went from his house to mine covered up with a red blanket, which made him look like a well-dressed Maori. Tea in the same way, with Wortley. Henry went to bed after dinner too. Willy had to go for the cows and milk them—morning and evening—but he passed the interval in bed. The women were stirring about very cheerful, and the children were packed up in Andy's hut where, strange to say, no water came in. Rain, rain till night and all night, most violent about nine o'clock. The floor is a dreadful puddle and our beds soaked with rain-water. I think what destruction is being done among the crazier dwellings of the poorer emigrants, and on the unfinished houses and public works. A consoling coincidence, or omen rather, I found in the day's portion of the Christian Year. The text was 'I do set my bow in the cloud', and the words and circumstances recalled by the passage gave me much real strength and patience under the horrible discomfort.