lar was good for
nothing at such work. If sent into the woods he was quite sure, either
not to return at all, or to come back without his scalp. And the
ordinary Provincial was not very much better. From this necessity,
therefore, was evolved the "Ranger."

He was a man of vigorous constitution, inured to the hardships of forest
life. He was capable of long marches, day after day, upon scant rations,
refreshed by short intervals of sleep while rolled in his blanket upon a
pile of boughs, with no other shelter but the sky. He knew the trails of
the Indians, as well as their ordinary haunts and likeliest places of
ambush. He knew, also, all the courses of the streams and the carrying
places between them. He understood Indian wiles and warfare, and was
prepared to meet them.

Stand such a man in a pair of stout shoes or moccasins; cover his lower
limbs with leggins and coarse small clothes; give him a close-fitting
jacket and a warm cap; stick a small hatchet in his belt; hang a
good-sized powder-horn by his side, and upon his back buckle a blanket
and a knapsack stuffed with a moderate supply of bread and raw salt
pork; to these furnishings add a good-sized hunting-knife, a trusty
musket and a small flask of spirits, and you have an average New
Hampshire Ranger of the Seven Year's war, ready for skirmish or pitched
battle; or, for the more common duty of reconnoitering the enemy's force
and movements, of capturing his scouts and provision trains, and getting
now and then a prisoner, from whom all information possible would be
extorted; and, in short, for annoying the French and Indian foe in every
possible way.

If you will add three or four inches to the average height of such a
soldier, give him consummate courage, coolness, readiness of resource
in extremities, together with intuitive knowledge of the enemy's wiles,
supplemented with a passable knowledge of French and Indian speech, you
will have a tolerable portrait of Captain Robert Rogers at the beginning
of our Seven Year's war.[A]

[Footnote A: "An engraved full-length portrait of Rogers was published
in London in 1776. He is represented as a tall, strong man, dressed in
the costume of a Ranger, with a powder-horn strung at his side, a gun
resting in the hollow of his arm, and a countenance by no means
prepossessing. Behind him, at a little distance, stand his Indian
followers."--[Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiach, vol. I, p. 164.]

He received his first Capt