With young Willard, to think was to act, and this project was no sooner conceived than he proceeded to put it into execution. He laid his plans frankly before his father, who, to his great gratification, assented to his proposal. A man was hired for fifteen dollars a month to take Willard's place on the farm, and the latter made his first venture as a trapper.
His initial experiment was to set six traps of the pattern called a "dead-fall" or "figure of four," and this resulted in the capture of two minks worth about eight dollars. With what an exultant heart he drew out his first mink and realized that by his own unaided exertions he had made some money, no boy or man need be told. He at once, however, entered into some rather fallacious calculations and built some extremely airy castles. It occurred to him that if out of six traps he could obtain two skins, out of one hundred he could obtain thirty-three, and so on, in proportion.
This, however, proved to be a miscalculation, it not being so much the number of traps set, as the quantity of game in a given locality which regulates the amount of success for a trapper. Yet his efforts in this new business succeeded to a gratifying degree, and the fact of having exchanged the dull monotony of farm drudgery for the exhilarating excitement of a hunter's life, was in itself a sufficient reward for any amount of exertion. Indeed what mode of life could be happier or more free, for a healthy, strong-limbed youth of fifteen, than to live as he then did, almost entirely in the woods? Then too, his daily route lay in the midst of some of the finest scenery to be found anywhere in New York, even in that grand old county of St. Lawrence.
To a lover of nature nothing could be more alluring than the locality through which Willard, at that period of his life, trapped and hunted. To follow the winding waters of the Oswegatchie is to enjoy a perpetual feast. That river is one of a great family of rivers, among which may be enumerated the Rackett, the Grasse, the Indian, and the Black, all of which take their rise far up in the recesses of the great North Woods. Though not to any extent navigable, it is yet nearly as broad as the lovely and "blue Juniata" of "peaceful Pennsylvania."
At times turbulent and brawling, it is often vexed in its passage to the St. Lawrence by rapids and cataracts varying in height and volume, but which in their infinite variety give a wild and romantic beauty to this poetical stream. At times it glides smoothly along through low meadow lands, and again it plunges into some dense thicket or brawls through some briery dell where the foliage is so thick that one can only see the glint and ripple of its waters at rare intervals, shining between the lapping leaves and tangled vines. Then again it sweeps onward through cleft rocks and jutting banks until, lost at last in the very heart of the primeval forest, its twilight waters reflect the images of giant trees which had their beginning on its banks a century ago.
THE YOUNG TRAPPER OF THE OSWEGATCHIE.
Willard's life during that autumn passed in persevering work. Day by day he traveled his accustomed routes, while the leaves turned from green to red and from red to russet and brown, and at last fell from the naked branches of the forest trees with a little farewell rustle, to be trodden into the rich soil below.
By the time the first snow came he found himself much more robust physically, and with seventy-five dollars clear profit in his pocket. In addition to these advantages he also acquired the inestimable habit of self-reliance, so that when he entered upon a course of preparation for his academic life, it was with full faith in himself. For four terms, beginning August thirteenth, 1857, and ending the latter part of June, 1859, he remained at the excellent institution of learning which he had selected, and while there gained considerable credit as a hard student.