Next day (19th) the rain fell incessantly. The mail was brought in by a little negro boy on horseback, and I was warned by my letters that an immediate advance of McClellan’s troops was probable. This is an old story. “Battle expected to-morrow” has been a heading in the papers for the last fortnight. In the afternoon I was driven over a part of the estate in a close carriage, through the windows of which, however, I caught glimpses of a beautiful country, wooded gloriously, and soft, sylvan, and well-cultivated as the best parts of Hampshire and Gloucestershire, the rolling lands of which latter county, indeed, it much resembled in its large fields, heavy with crops of tobacco and corn. The weather was too unfavourable to admit of a close inspection of the fields; but I visited one or two tobacco houses, where the fragrant Maryland was lying in masses on the ground, or hanging from the rafters, or filled the heavy hogsheads with compressed smoke.
