Day trip to New Jersey. Rain falls in torrents

Monday and Tuesday, October 27th & 28th, 1823 – [Douglas goes on a botanising day-trip to New Jersey, and gets rather wet] – meeting Mr Hogg, according to our last night’s proposal, at half-past 5 o’clock in the morning [another of Douglas's early starts, in the dark at this time of year], we crossed the Hudson River to New Jersey for obtaining Sarracenia purpurea, which was our chief object.

The morning was fine and inviting, but before we had got to the desired spot, the rain fell in such torrents that we were urged to take shelter in the first place; towards midday on Tuesday we got out, and on looking on the face of the country beheld it deluged.

Calculating that Sarracenia was inaccessible for the present, we bent our course to an adjoining wood where we were amply repaid. Neottia repens in great profusion; cedar swamp, or rather anemones in the swamp. Soil moderately dry [?], composed altogether of decayed leaves and branches of cedars. By setting our feet on the ground we soon sank, the soil being very soft.  I took a good quantity of plants.

We got back at 6 o’clock in the evening, congratulating ourselves on having been more fortunate than expected.

This section of DD's Journal always amuses me. It has the feel of a typical "plan conceived late at night while slightly drunk", and executed in a slightly uncoordinated and under-prepared fashion. The first day is a write-off, due to rain and when they eventually emerge at noon on the second day [Where have they stayed? In a tavern? Are they hungover?] everywhere is, surprise, surprise, "deluged". But our heroes press on into the swamp and soon sink. Incidentally, there will be more of this, and worse, in a couple of weeks time when they return to the hunt for Sarracenia and get even muddier. Naturally, the rain falls in torrents, a favourite expression of Douglas which occurs time and again in his Journal. Perhaps it reminded him of his native Scotland!