His youth was occupied in acquiring the rude accomplishments of the age. In the management of the broadsword the ardent and daring boy soon acquired proficiency; his frame was robust and muscular, and his arm of unusual length. At an early age he is said by tradition to have tried his powers in a predatory excursion, of which he was the leader. This was in the year 1691, and it was called the herdship, or devastation of Kippen, in the Lennox. No lives were sacrificed, but the marauding system was carried to its extent. The young Macgregor was educated in the Presbyterian faith. "He was not," says his biographer,[104] "free from those superstitious notions so prevalent in his country; and, although few men possessed more strength of mind in resisting the operation of false and gloomy tenets, he was sometimes led away from the principles he had adopted, to a belief in supernatural appearances." Nor was it likely that it should be otherwise; for the wildest dreams of fancy were cherished in the seclusion of the region, then inconceivably retired and remote, in which Rob Roy is said to have passed days in silent admiration of Nature in her grandest aspects; for the man who afterwards appeared so stern and rugged to his enemies, was accessible to the tenderest feelings, and to the most generous sympathies.[105] Although his father had succeeded in military life, Rob Roy was destined to a far more humble occupation. The discrepancy between the Scottish pride of ancestry and the lowly tracks which are occasionally chalked out for persons of the loftiest pretensions to origin, is manifest in the destination of Rob Roy. He became a dealer in cattle. It was, it is true, the custom for landed proprietors, as well as their tenantry, to deal in the trade of grazing and selling cattle. In those days, no Lowlanders, nor any English drovers, had the audacity to enter the Highlands. "The cattle," says Sir Walter Scott, "which were the staple commodity of the mountains, were escorted down to fairs, on the borders of the Lowlands, by a party of Highlanders, with their arms rattling round them; and who dealt, however, in all faith and honour with their southern customers." After describing the nature of the affrays which were the result of such collision, Sir Walter remarks, "A slash or two, or a broken head, was easily accommodated, and as the trade was of benefit to both parties, trifling skirmishes were not allowed to interrupt its harmony." For some time, the speculations in which Rob Roy engaged were profitable; he took a tract of land in Balquhidder for the purpose of grazing, and his success soon raised him in the estimation of the county. But his cattle were often carried away by hordes of big robbers from Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland, and he was obliged, in defence, to maintain a party of men to repel these incursions. Hence the warlike tastes which were afterwards more fully displayed.