THE LEDYARD TRAIL

Through the further kindness of John E. Johnson '66, the Dartmouth Outing Club has been enabled to complete its trail laid out1 in memory of John Led-yard. This trail starts on South Park Street opposite the trenches and ends on the top of Velvet Rocks about two miles distant. It runs through fields belonging to the College to the base of the hill and through pasture < and woodland owned by Stephen Chase '96 to the summit of the Rocks.

At the upper end of the trail an open space has been cleared and a stone hearth or open air fireplace has been constructed. On a tree near by is a painted board, bearing this inscription:

On or near this spot John Ledyard and some of his companions passed a night in the winter of 1772-3—and thus anticipated the founding of The Dartmouth Outing Club.

The incident referred to in this inscription is thus related in Chase's "History of Dartmouth College": "In the midwinter of 1772-3, Ledyard, with Wheelock's consent, persuaded several of the students to camp out with him in the snow in the wilds of the 'Velvet Rocks', two miles east of the College. The snow was three feet deep, and drifted. The party went in couples on snow-shoes, and reaching the summit with some labor, built a fire, ate their supper, and each couple prepared for the night by scraping away the snow and laying a bed of evergreen boughs and a blanket. One then lying down, his partner drew over him a second blanket and buried him in snow, and then crawled in by his side. They passed, they said, quite a comfortable night, and were at home in time for prayers by candle-light in the morning."

This was in the winter preceding the building of the famous canoe on the banks of the Connecticut, which was to start Ledyard on his life of adventurous roving—a life that included a circum-navigation of the globe in the company of Captain Cook, naval service under John Paul Jones on the Bon Homme Richard, and a journey into the wilds of Siberia in the winter time; and that was suddenly cut short by his death in Cairo, just as Ledyard was about to set out on an exploring trip into the then unknown land of Timbuctoo.

The new trail to Velvet Rocks and the great stone hearth at the end of it, built and owned by the Dartmouth Club, form a most appropriate memorial to this earliest Dartmouth lover of the out-of-doors.