The completion of the slender education which he received was effected at Dartmouth College, an institution established by the Rev. Dr. Wheelock, in the back woods, with the benevolent design of scattering the seeds of religion and civilization among the Indian nations. Here Ledyard, whose mind was as impatient of the salutary restraints of discipline as that of any savage upon earth, exhibited unequivocal tokens of those locomotive propensities which afterward goaded him into rather than directed him in his romantic but almost aimless wanderings over the greater part of the habitable world. For ordinary studies he had evidently no aptitude. He read, indeed, but it was such reading as beguiled away the time, and nourished the fantastic vagaries of his imagination, without much enlarging his mind, or knitting his character into firmness or consistency. In many respects he scarcely yielded to the knight of La Mancha. What does the reader think he carried with him to college, whither he was proceeding for the purpose of fitting himself for spreading the light of Christianity, and with it the blessings of social life, among the Indians? Histories of former missions, from the failure or success of which he might derive light for his own guidance; or books which, by unfolding the genuine character of savages, might instruct him in the art of captivating their affections and moulding their passions into manageable forms? Nothing of the kind. But instead of these, he drove across the woods to college in a sulkey, containing a choice collection of plays, with calico curtains, and various other materials for scenic representations!
When he had been some time at Dartmouth, toiling at studies which were wholly incompatible with his tastes, he suddenly disappeared, and no one could conjecture whither he had betaken himself. He was absent upwards of a quarter of a year; and it afterward appeared that during all this time he was wandering among the savages, reconnoitring, as his American biographer conjectures, the strong places of ignorance and prejudice against which, as a missionary, his future attacks were to be directed. It is more probable, however, that the excursion was undertaken merely to escape from the discipline of the college, than which nothing, it is clear, could be more irksome to him. After roaming as far as the borders of Canada, picking up as he went along a knowledge of the character and language of the savages, which was of essential service to him in his subsequent wanderings, he returned to Dartmouth, and resumed his studies.