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