Although our new garden had been planned, and many trees planted in it, even before our removal from Riversdale, it was not neatly and artistically finished until the June of the present year, 1843.

A great lightwood tree, very green and well-formed, grew at the lower end, and a drain, through which a bright clear stream always flowed, traversed one side; the banks were well planted with raspberries, currants, stone-fruit trees, and nuts, whilst in nice moist corners we cherished some weeping willow cuttings; and encouraged a few groups of the elegant white-blossomed tea-tree to grow up in kindly companionship with the strangers.

The valuable gifts we received from the paternal orchard at Cambria included the finest kinds of grafted fruit trees of all sorts, many of them bearing well, so that even before our garden was finished it yielded us fruit, and at once assumed a pleasant and promising aspect when made neat and trim: the walks, smoothly laid, and sown with English grass-seeds, showed green and fresh, and in fancy I saw the China-rose cuttings I had carefully planted vis-à-vis beside them at intervals, grown up into verdant and blooming arches and bowers. But my speculations on the future glory of our garden were suddenly checked by a tremendous winter flood, or rather two successive floods early in July, which caused the rivers to overflow in new places, and drove a raging roaring torrent directly through our neat, precise, and just-completed garden.