It was incumbent upon us to make a strict examination into the amount of our property, and our immediate resources; and in this office I united myself with Marguerite, not only with a degree of cheerfulness and application, the perfect contrast of my whole conduct ever since our arrival in Switzerland, but which greatly exceeded any thing I had ever before exhibited in a business of this nature. We found that, though all our hopes of a harvest were annihilated, yet we were not destitute of the instant means of subsistence. The resources we possessed, whether in money or provisions, that were our dependence till the period when the new produce should supply their place, were uninjured. Our implements of husbandry remained as before. The land was not impoverished, but had rather derived additional fertility from the effects of the storm. What we had lost was chiefly the produce of our capital for one year, together with a part of that capital itself in the live stock that had been destroyed. This was a loss which a certain degree of care and scope in our external circumstances might easily have enabled us to supply. But the principle of supply was denied us. It was with considerable difficulty that all the economy of Marguerite had enabled her to support our family establishment, while every thing of this kind had gone on prosperously. Such a shock as the present we were totally disqualified to surmount. It compelled us to a complete revolution of our affairs. Many indeed of our neighbours had scarcely any greater advantage in their private affairs than ourselves. But they possessed one superiority that proved of the greatest importance in this conjuncture; they were natives of the state in which they resided. In the cantons of Switzerland, the destruction of the fruits of the earth, occasioned by inclement seasons and tempests, is by no means unfrequent; and it is therefore customary, in plentiful years, to lay up corn in public magazines, that the people may not perish in periods of scarcity. These magazines are placed under the inspection and disposal of the magistracy; and the inhabitants looked to them with confidence for the supply of their need. No storm, however, had occurred in the memory of man so terrible and ruinous as the present; and it became evident that the magazines would prove a resource too feeble for the extent of the emergency.