The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from
my journal, which were taken from time to time as things occurred.
But it may be proper previously to remark that the first week in
January was uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from
every quarter: from whence may be inferred, as there is great
reason to believe is the case, that intense frosts seldom take place
till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with water;* and hence
dry autumns are seldom followed by rigorous winters.
(* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and
particularly the month of September, during which there fell at
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, six inches and an half of rain.
And the terrible long frost of 1739-40 set in after a rainy season,
and when the springs were very high.)
January 7th. -- Snow driving all the day, which was followed by
frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass
overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the
gates and filling the hollow lanes.
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