_February_ 13_th._--The morning began most inauspiciously. It rained very hard, and blew with equal violence. I thought of the poor courier, who would be prevented by it from passing the Dinckel. I set out once more at eight o'clock from Rheine in this dismal weather and without glasses, not any being procurable at the place. It was, indeed, a terrifying view on all sides, and resembled a deluge or inundation. I recommended myself to God, and comforted myself by the thought that I undertook the journey in the service of my royal mistress. That I was not repeatedly overturned was almost a miracle; and had I been so in the great pieces of standing water through which I passed, the consequences might have been of the worst sort. I crossed the little river Aá, which was likewise swollen by the rain to a considerable size. I got at one o'clock to Ippenburen; from this place I had only eighteen miles to Osnabrück, but the road was so horribly bad that all I had yet seen sunk before it. A peasant who accompanied us on foot about four miles from Ippenburen supported the carriage at different places with his hands, or we must have been overset. The torrents of rain which had fallen made the highway so soft that the wheels sank up to the axletrees at every step. There were great holes made in the middle of the road large enough to take a man and horse. In other places it was so rough, I expected each moment that the axletrees, wheels, or brancards must go to pieces. We crossed two very dangerous waters by moonlight, in one of which a single inch more on one side must have precipitated us into a river, where we should, I think, have been both inevitably drowned. How we escaped and got safe to Osnabrück I do not know. In the bitterness of my heart, tired with such incessantly-repeated dangers and vexations, I cursed the errand, and swore that I would never again undertake a journey through Westphalia in the winter, let the inducement be what it would; but this was only momentary, and _now_ I am ready, at my sovereign's command, to return through all if it should be necessary. 'Twas near ten o'clock at night when I reached Osnabrück, to my no small comfort. I was fatigued and sore with the continued shaking of the carriage; I wanted glasses to my chaise; I wanted repose; so I determined to stay the night.