By Washington Irving
Originally published in 1837
Introductory Notice
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.
