Nevertheless, a secret predilection, which operated like destiny, already began to shape his course towards its proper goal. An appetite for violent excitement gradually discovered itself in his character. Action of some kind or other became necessary. To satisfy this longing he climbed mountains in winter, and slept in the snow; but this sobering couch, which we are told brought St. Anthony to reason, failed to produce so favourable an effect upon Ledyard. He descended the mountain apparently pleased to have discovered that slight hardships, at least, would not kill him, and fully resolved, as soon as opportunity should present itself, to put the force of his constitution to still further trial. Accident not furnishing him with an occasion for exhibiting his prowess in this way, he took the matter into his own hands.
Robinson Crusoe was evidently Ledyard’s _beau idéal_ of a hero. To the young mind which makes companions of its own dream, solitude is sweet, as it favours their growth, and throws a gorgeous mantle over their deformities. Our young traveller seems to have early conceived the design of achieving a reputation, and in the mean while, until he should have made the first step, and acquired the right to exact some degree of consideration among mankind, the dim forest, or the lonely river, was a more agreeable associate in his mind than any of those two-legged animals with which a residence at college daily brought him into contact. He therefore at once resolved to put an end to so mawkish a way of life. Selecting from the majestic forest which clothed the margin of the Connecticut River a tree large enough to form a canoe, he contrived, with the aid of some of his fellow-students, to fell and convey it to the stream, which runs near the college. Here it was hollowed out, and fashioned in the requisite shape, and when completed measured fifty feet in length by three in breadth. His young college companions enabled him to lay in the necessary store of provisions. He had a bear-skin for a covering; a Greek Testament and Ovid to amuse him on the way; and thus equipped, he pushed off into the current, bade adieu to his youthful friends, turned his back upon Dartmouth, and floated leisurely down the stream. Hartford, the place of his destination, was one hundred and forty miles distant. The country, during much of the way, was a wilderness, and the river, of the navigation of which he was totally ignorant, exhibited in many places dangerous falls and rapids. However, youth and ignorance are generally bold. He was, besides, too well pleased at escaping from the irksomeness of regular study, and, indeed, too much enamoured of danger itself to have been terrified, even had he fully understood the character of the river.