till, while engaged in reading, the canoe approached Below's Falls, the
noise of which, rushing among the rocks, suddenly aroused him; the
danger was imminent; had the canoe got into the narrow passage, it must
instantly have been dashed in pieces, and himself inevitably have
perished.

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.