"From thence I crossed over to Shacco's and took Thomas Tinsley for my guide, finding the distance about fifteen miles.  I found everybody well at the Falls [on the James River], blessed be God, though the bloody flux raged pretty much in the neighborhood.  Mr. Booker had received a letter the day before from Mrs. Byrd, giving an account of great desolation made in our neighborhood by the death of Mr. Lightfoot, Mrs. Soan, Captain Gerald, and Colonel Henry Harrison.  Finding the flux had been so fatal, I desired Mr. Booker to make use of one of the following remedy, in case it should come amongst my people:  To let them blood immediately about eight ounces, the next day to give them a dose of Indian physic, and to repeat the vomit again the day following, unless the symptoms abated.  In the meantime, they should eat nothing but a quarter of a pint of milk boiled with a quart of water and medicated with a little mullein root or that of the prickly pear, to restore the mucus of the bowels and heal the excoriation.  At the same time, I ordered him to communicate this method to all the poor neighbors, and especially to my overseers, with strict orders to use it on the first appearance of that distemper, because in that and all other sharp diseases delays are very dangerous.

"I also instructed Mr. Booker in the way I had learnt of blowing up the rocks, which were now drilled pretty full of holes, and he promised to put it in execution.  After discoursing seriously with the father about my affairs, I joked with the daughter in the evening and about eight retired to my castle and recollected all the follies of the day, the little I had learnt and the still less good I had done.

"9 [October].  My long absence made me long for the domestic delights of my own family, for the smiles of an affectionate wife and the prattle of my innocent children.  As soon as I sallied out of my castle, I understood that Colonel Carter's Sam was come, by his master's leave, to show my people to blow up the rocks in the canal.  He pretended to great skill in that matter but performed very little, which, however, might be effect of the idleness rather than ignorance.  He came upon one of my horses, which he tied to a tree at Shacco's, where the poor animal kept a fast of a night and a day.  Though this fellow worked very little at the rocks, yet my man Argalus stole his trade and performed as well as he."