, that
Robert Rogers acquired his scanty stock of "book-learning," as then
termed. But education consists in much besides book-learning, and he
supplemented his narrow stock of this by a wider and more practical
knowledge, which he obtained amid the rocks and stumps upon his father's
farm and in the hunter's camp.

The woods, at this day, were full of game. The deer, the bear, the
moose, the beaver, the fox, the muskrat, and various other wild animals
existed in great numbers. To a young man of hardy constitution,
possessed of enterprise, energy, and a fondness for forest sports,
hunting afforded not only an attractive, but a profitable employment.
Young Rogers had all these characteristics, and as a hunter, tramped
through large sections of the wilderness between the French and English
settlements. On such excursions he mingled much with the Indians, and
somewhat with the French, obtaining by such intercourse some knowledge
of their languages, of their modes of hunting, and their habits of life.
He also acquired a fondness for the woods and streams, tracing the
latter well up towards their sources, learning the portages between
their headwaters, many of the Indian trails and the general topography
of the great area just mentioned.

During the French and Indian wars small bodies of soldiers were often
employed to "watch and ward" the frontiers, and protect their
defenceless communities from the barbarous assaults of Indians, turned
upon them from St. Francis and Crown Point. Robert Rogers had in him
just the stuff required in such a soldier. We shall not, therefore, be
surprised to find him on scouting duty in the Merrimack Valley, under
Captain Ladd, as early as 1746, when he was but nineteen years of
age;[A] and, three years later, engaged in the same service, under
Captain Ebenezer Eastman, of Pennycook.[B] Six years afterwards, in
1753, the muster rolls show him to have been a member of Captain John
Goff's company, and doing like service.[C] Such was the training of a
self-reliant mind and a hardy physique for the ranging service, in which
they were soon to be employed.

[Footnote A: New Hampshire Adjutant General's Report, 1866, vol. 2, p.
95.]

[Footnote B: Same, p. 99.]

[Footnote C: Same, p. 118.]

I ought, perhaps, to mention, that in 1749, as Londonderry became filled
to overflowing with repeated immigrations from the North of Ireland,
James Rogers, the father of Robert, a proprietor, and one of the ea