By great exertion, however, he escaped the catastrophe and reached the shore; and by the kind assistance of some people in the neighbourhood, had his canoe dragged by oxen around the falls, and again committed to the water.  “On a bright spring morning,” says his biographer, “just as the sun was rising, some of Mr. Seymour’s family were standing near his house, on the high bank of the small river that runs through the city of Hartford and empties itself into the Connecticut, when they espied, at some distance, an object of unusual appearance moving slowly up the stream.”  On a nearer approach it was discovered to be a canoe, in the stern of which something was observed to be heaped up, but apparently without life or motion.  At length it struck the shore, and out leapt John Ledyard from under his bear-skin, to the great astonishment of his relatives at this sudden apparition, who had no other idea than that of his being diligently engaged in his studies at Dartmouth, and fitting himself for the pious office of a missionary among the Indians.

Now, it was deemed expedient, both by his friends and by himself, that all further thoughts of his becoming a divine should be abandoned; and in the course of a few weeks we find him a common sailor, on board a vessel bound for Gibraltar.  While at this place Ledyard was all at once missing; he had enlisted into the army.  The master, being the friend of his late father, went and remonstrated with him for this strange freak, and urged him to return.  The commanding officer assented to his release, and he returned to the ship.

The voyage being finished, the only profit yielded by it to Ledyard was a little experience in the hardships of a sailor’s life, as his scanty funds were soon exhausted and poverty stared him in the face.  At the age of twenty-two he found himself a solitary wanderer, dependent on the bounty of his friends, without employment or prospects, having tried various pursuits, and failed of success in all.  But poverty and privation were trifles of little weight with Ledyard; his pride was aroused, and he determined to do something that should exonerate him from all dependence on his American friends.

He had often heard his grandfather descant on his English ancestors, and his wealthy connexions in the old country; it struck him, therefore, while thus hanging loosely on society, that it might be no unwise thing to visit these relatives, and claim alliance with them.  With this view he proceeded to New York, and made his terms with the master of a vessel bound for Plymouth.  Here he was set down, without money, without friends, or even a single acquaintance.  How to get to London, where he made himself sure of a hearty welcome and a home among those connexions, whose wealth and virtues he had heard so often extolled by his grandfather, was a matter not easily settled.  As good fortune would have it, he fell in with an Irishman as thoughtless as himself, and whose plight