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Search - The Adventures Of Captain Bonneville - Spanish Voyages Of Discovery

The Adventures Of Captain Bonneville Spanish Voyages Of Discovery
Author: Washington Irving

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE WASHINGTON IRVING. - INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. WHILE engaged in writing an account of the grand cnterprise of Astoria, it was my practice to seek all kinds of oral information connected with the subject. Nowhere did P pick up more interesting particulars than at the table of Mr. John Jacob Astor, who, being the pa... more »triarch of the fur trade in the United States, was accustomed to have at his board various persons of adventurous turn, some of vhomh ad 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, Shakspeare, 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. Pa1, ul1s CIl lrch in Broadway, his bald head uncovered, his hat lying by his sic e, his eyes riveted to the page of his book, and his vholes oul so engaged as tolose all consciousness of the passing throng or the passing hour. Captain Bonneville, it mill be found, inherited something of his fathers bonhomie, and his excitable imagination though the latter was somewhat disciplined in early years by mathemati6al studies. He was educated at our national hlilitary 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 3 number of years he was stationed at various posts in the Far West. Here he was brought into frequent intercourse with Indian traders, mountain tmppers, 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. By degrees he shaped his vague day-dream into a practical reality Having made himself acquainted with all the requisites for a trading enterprise beyond the mountains, he determined to undertake it. A leave of absence and a sanction of his expedition was obtained from the major-general in chief, on his offering to combine public utility with his private projects, and to collect statistical information for the War Department concerning the wild . countries and wild tribes he might visit in the course of his journeyings. Nothing now was wanting to the darling project of the captain but the ways and means. The expedition would require an outfit of many thousand dollars a staggering obstacle to a soldier, whose capital is seldom anythmg more than his sword...

ISBN-13: 9781408626399
ISBN-10: 140862639X
Publication Date: 10/29/2007
Pages: 532
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Hanlins Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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