WHILE ENGAGED in writing an account of the grand enterprise of
Astoria, it was my practice to seek all kinds of oral information
connected with the subject. Nowhere did I pick up more
interesting particulars than at the table of Mr. John Jacob
Astor; who, being the patriarch of the fur trade in the United
States, was accustomed to have at his board various persons of
adventurous turn, some of whom had been engaged in his own great
undertaking; others, on their own account, had made expeditions
to the Rocky Mountains and the waters of the Columbia.
Among these personages, one who peculiarly took my fancy was
Captain Bonneville, of the United States army; who, in a rambling
kind of enterprise, had strangely ingrafted the trapper and
hunter upon the soldier. As his expeditions and adventures will
form the leading theme of the following pages, a few biographical
particulars concerning him may not be unacceptable.
Captain Bonneville is of French parentage. His father was a
worthy old emigrant, who came to this country many years since,
and took up his abode in New York. He is represented as a man not
much calculated for the sordid struggle of a money-making world,
but possessed of a happy temperament, a festivity of imagination,
and a simplicity of heart, that made him proof against its rubs
and trials. He was an excellent scholar; well acquainted with
Latin and Greek, and fond of the modern classics. His book was
his elysium; once immersed in the pages of Voltaire, Corneille,
or Racine, or of his favorite English author, Shakespeare, he
forgot the world and all its concerns. Often would he be seen in
summer weather, seated under one of the trees on the Battery, or
the portico of St. Paul's church in Broadway, his bald head
uncovered, his hat lying by his side, his eyes riveted to the
page of his book, and his whole soul so engaged, as to lose all
consciousness of the passing throng or the passing hour.
Captain Bonneville, it will be found, inherited something of his
father's bonhommie, and his excitable imagination; though the
latter was somewhat disciplined in early years, by mathematical
studies. He was educated at our national Military Academy at West
Point, where he acquitted himself very creditably; thence, he
entered the army, in which he has ever since continued.
The nature of our military service took him to the frontier,
where, for a number of years, he was stationed at various posts
in the Far West. Here he was brought into frequent intercourse
with Indian traders, mountain trappers, and other pioneers of the
wilderness; and became so excited by their tales of wild scenes
and wild adventures, and their accounts of vast and magnificent
regions as yet unexplored, that an expedition to the Rocky
Mountains became the ardent desire of his heart, and an
enterprise to explore untrodden tracts, the leading object of his
ambition.
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