Excerpt from The Adventures of Captain Bonneville Nothing now was wanting to the darling project of the cap tain 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 anything 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 in uence, who had been his associate in boyhood, and who cherished a schoolfellow friendship for him. He took a general interest in the scheme of the captain; introduced him to commercial men of his acquaintance, and in a little while an association was formed, and the necessary funds were raised to carry the proposed measure into effect. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

American literary giant Washington Irving relates the true stories of Captain James Bonneville, one of the first explorers of the American West, in this gripping classic.

Excerpt from Adventures of Captain Bonneville Captain Bonneville, French-born American, was a "rover-by-instinct," but had to postpone his own free roving for a long tome, going where the war department told him to go and staying where it told him to stay until he was thirty-five years old. After graduating from the Military Academy in 1815, he spent eight years at frontier army posts, four years at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and four years at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. While at the latter place he slowly made up his mind to be fur trader, as described by Irving: 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. He started on May 1, 1832, from Fort Osage, Missouri, ten miles from Independence. He had a hundred and ten men, and twenty ox and mule wagons groaning with their loads of provisions, ammunition, and trinkets for Indian trading. His route was that of the future Oregon Trail. He was the first man to take wagons right on through the South Pass - across the Rockies - with wheels rolling at an elevation of 7,489 feet. On Green River he built a stockade called Fort Bonneville Rival trappers referred to it as Bonneville's Folly or Fort Nonsense. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.