St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1881-03-18

times written, but evidently a dug out.
His college companions helped him,
probably Indian boys as well as white
boys. Did they know his purpose ? |
fancy not. They were the pioneers of
college boating clubs; and as you
whirl along the iron track to-day you
can with fancy eye glasses see across
the river, under the overhauging trees,
that group of jolly boys, working with
fire and steel, burning and bewing,
chatting, full of life and vigor and fun,
while the vast log takes shape from
day to day. They are all dead long
ago. | have no catalogue of the Dart
mouth alumni, and know nothing of
any of them. Whatever their lives
thereafter, they were all more or less
characterized by wondrous adventures.
There never was human life which
had not in it passages Of the. sort we
call romance e-passages OF deep emo
ton, strong conflict, great pain or
great joy. They are all dust now, those
boys, and of the living flesh and bone
and sinew that worked on Ledyard's
boat at Dartmouth in l772, trees have
grown large and strclg, oaks and ma
The boat was finished, aud in a star
ry night of April, when the river was
running full with the melting snow of
the mountain country, the young voya-
ger stole down to the shore, pushed Oft
into the current, and began his wander
ings.
He made choice of companionship
which, incongruous as it may seem,
was not strange when we consider his
character. He had provisioned his
boat, and took his bear skin for cover
ing. For company he carried his Greek
Testament and his Ovid, and, drifting
down the glorious river, than which
none on earth runs through more beau
tiful snd varied scenery, he lay rolled
in his shaggy covering and read now
the widest romances of Greek and RO-
man mythology, now the eternal truths
of revelation.
OF his adventurous voyage we know
nothing except that as he approached
the gorge at Bellows Falls he was SO
intent on one or the other of his books
that he barely escaped being drawn in
to the rapids and hurled to destruction
But he escaped, dragged his dug out
around the falls, and resumed his voy-
age. So it happened that Mr.. Seymour
aud his family in Hartford were sur
prised one sunny morning at seeing
this strange craft coming from the Con-
necticut up the Little river, stopping in
front of the house and disclarging q
solitary vOyager, the once intended In
dian missionary.
Thereafter followed fifteen or sixteer
years of rowing life, realizing in the
main all the imaginations of the boy
With Captain Cooke he went arOnnC
the world. Alone he penetrated the
depths of Siberia. He was always trav'
cling, travelling, travelling.
| 1t is not probable that any time il
all his fancies and fore thinkings haC
ever come to him any imagination o
the end, and least of all of such an enc
as he at last reached. In Cairo, whith
er he had gone with intent to cross AT
RIGA to the western sea, and where h,
had concluded, after three months o
anxious delay, an arrangement with al
Arab merchant to take him a thousanC
miles and leave him then to force hi
own way to Timbuctoo, just at the mo
ment of packing his luggage for tn,
start. a sudden illness and fatal over
dose of medicine arrested his wander
ings on earth, and the restless boy o
Dartmouth, the reckless vOyager on tn
Connecticut, went suddenly, withou
scrip or purse, to see the wonders of tn
undiscovered country.
No one knows where he was buried
Elsewhere | have written of my vail
attempts in Egypt in 1855 to ascertain
something about this. | renewed th
inquiries few years ago i'll Cairo. Blu
the search was utterly hopeless. Ever
the Moslem lets his fathers tomb crum
BILE without repair, and an easter
cemetary is always a ruined graveyard
But he was of course not buried in
Mohammedan ground. Neither is
certain that Greek, or COpt, or Armeni
an or Latin would admit his poor dus
to the panionship of their dust.
was a curious, very remarkable scare
which made, in all and every one of tn
various mOnasteries and churches /
Cairo, Fostat and Boulack, seekin
some trace of Ledyard's death or buria
| had long interviews with very age
clergymen, longer interviews with Gus
todians of pretended records, whic
proved to be no records, and after all
was left to the longest interviews wit
my own imaginatiOns, in the wOnderfr
glamour of Egyptian evening light
when the sun was going or had gon
down into the Lybian desert.
Many times every year | pass alon
the river bank at Hanover, and sc
that imaginary group of boys undt
the trees, hewing out the boat. Man
times | have come up to the river sid
in the night and have seen the sOlital
? voyager drifting down the current I'll
der this same old sky. And SO it Occu
, that while our travellers see only I'll
; beautiful river and the dark trees whic
, still shade it from the forenoon sun, {
perhaps the glitter of moon or stars
the ripples, | see more. For, unliE
, the boy who fancied far off a golde
2 sunlight on a free and rowing life.
p look back to that which he looking 70
: ward, imagined, and see instead of th;
D life a Strengthened form, young, mac
p for strength, but very still a face
! exceeding beauty, but now set al
e calm; surrounding people weariI
$ strange robes, uttering no words
n sorrow; a grave in the yellow san
g where the desert meets the Nile aooC
e the sun gone down, the twilight comiI
o around the MOkattam hills in haste
e claim the valley for silence and gloon
: the flood of the Nile flowing to me
4 the flood of the Connecticut in the o.
+ great sea and the Hartford boy at re:
3 alone, but not alone. For the rivers
Il human life that have flowed in maj
r. ages through many valleys, like t
If rivers of Asia and Africa and AmeriC
have poured their counted and nuI
e bered drops into one great sea. Al
n when Menes and Osirtasen and Thot
-.a.. 1900 flo -o.r