uld 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.

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
any thing more than his sword. Full of that buoyant hope, however, which
belongs to the sanguine temperament, he repaired to New-York, the great
focus of American enterprise, where there are always funds ready for any
scheme, however chimerical or romantic. Here he had the good fortune to
meet with a gentleman of high respectability and influence, who had been
his associate in boyhood, and who cherished a schoolfellow friendship
for him.