Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/31

 Robert Rogers, the Ranger.

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��ROBERT ROGERS, THE RANGER.

By Joseph B. Walker.

��No man has been universally great. Individuals who have made themselves prominent among their fellows have done so by achievements in special directions only, and confined to limited portions of their lives. Particularly true is this- remark when applied to Major Robert Rogers, the Ranger, who, in our la.st French war, greatly distin- guished himself as a partisan com- mander, and gained as wide famiC as did any other soldier of equal rank and opportunity.

I do not introduce him here as a saint, for, as is well known, no quality of sanctity ever entered his composition ; but rather, as the resolute commander of resolute men, in desperate encoun- ters with a desperate foe ; as a man eminently fitted for the rough work given him to do. And just here and now I am lerainded of a remark made in his old age by the late Moody Kent, for a long period an able member of the New Hampshire bar, and there the as- sociate of Governor Plummer, George Sullivan, and Judge Jeremiah Smith, as well as of JeremiaJi Mason, and the two Websters, Ezekiel and Daniel, all of whom he survived. Said ISIr. Kent, one day, evidently looking forward to the termination of his career, " Could Zeke Webster have been living at my decease he would have spoken as well of me, yes, as well of me as he could." If one can summon to his mind and heart the kindly charity attributed to Mr. Webster, he may, should he care for it, find a comfortable hour in the society of this famous Ranger. He was born of Scotch-Irish parents, in the good old Scotch-Irish town of Londonderiy,

��New Hampshire, in the year 1727.* At the time of his birth, this was a frontier town, and its log houses were the last civilized abodes which the traveller passed as he went up the Merrimack valley on his way to Canada. It was the seed-town from which were after- wards planted the ten or a dozen other Scotch-Irish townships of New Hamp- shire.-f It was the first to introduce and scatter abroad Presbyterian prin- ciples and Irish potatoes over consider- able sections of this Province.

Parson McGregor and his people had been in their new homes but four years when they had ready for occupancy a log school-house, sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide. It was in this, or in one hke it, that Robert Rogers acquired his scanty stock of " book-learning," as then termed. But education con- sists 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 ot hardy constitution, possessed of enter- prise, energy, and a fondness for forest sports, hunting afforded not only an attractive, but a profitable employment. Young Rogers had all these character- istics, and as a hunter, tramped through large sections of the wilderness between the French and Enghsh settlements.

t Parker's History of Londonderry, p. 180.
 * Stark's Histon,- of Dunbarton, p. 178.

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