[Footnote A: Stark's History of Dunbarton, p. 178.]

[Footnote B: Parker's History of Londonderry, p. 180.]

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 like it, that
Robert Rogers acquired his scanty stock of "book-learning," as then
termed. But education consists 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 of hardy constitution,
possessed of enterprise, energy, and a fondness for forest sports,
hunting afforded not only an attractive, but a profitable employment.
Young Rogers had all these characteristics, and as a hunter, tramped
through large sections of the wilderness between the French and English
settlements. On such excursions he mingled much with the Indians, and
somewhat with the French, obtaining by such intercourse some knowledge
of their languages, of their modes of hunting, and their habits of life.
He also acquired a fondness for the woods and streams, tracing the
latter well up towards their sources, learning the portages between
their headwaters, many of the Indian trails and the general topography
of the great area just mentioned.

During the French and Indian wars small bodies of soldiers were often