The Adventures of Captain Bonneville: Digested From His Journal

New condition color illustrated softcover wraps. Includes Introductory Notice and Appendix. Originally published in 1837. When Captain James Bonneville left for California in May of 1832 his motives were mixed. Officially, the French-born officer was on a two-year leave of absence from the U.S. Army, but he carried orders to collect information on the geography, geology, and topography of the Country within the limits of the Territories belonging to the United States, between our frontier and the Pacific. No one heard from him for five years, and it was assumed he was dead, or AWOL. But Bonneville had befriended a mountain man named Joseph Rutherford Walker in 1833, and the two men became the first white men to see Yosemite. They returned by a more southern route, discovering Walker Pass, the southern route across the Sierras (the salt flats in Utah are named in Bonneville's honor). Upon Bonneville's return, Washington Irving, by then an internationally famous writer, met him in the home of John Jacob Astor, the fur baron. Washington was fascinated by Bonneville's tales of exploration, finding them full of interesting details of life among the mountains, and of mountain men and Native Americans that he had met. Bonneville's journals formed the backbone of Irving's work, which was widely applauded upon its publication in 1837. It has remained a classic ever since, capturing a long lost era of rugged mountain men and the thrill of being the first to view the expansive landscapes of the American West. ". happening to be at the city of Washington, I again came upon the captain, who was attending the slow adjustment of his affairs with the War Department. I found him quartered with worthy brother in arms, a major in the army. Here he was writing at a table, covered with maps and papers, in the center of a large barrack room, fancifully decorated with Indian arms, and trophies, and war dresses, and the skins of various wild animals, and hung round with pictures of Indian games and ceremonies, and scenes of war and hunting. In a word, the captain was beguiling the tediousness of attendance at court, by an attempt at authorship; and was rewriting and extending his traveling notes, and making maps of the regions he had explored. As he sat at the table, in this curious apartment, with his high bald head of somewhat foreign cast, he reminded me of some of those antique pictures of authors that I have seen in old Spanish volumes. The result of his labors was a mass of manuscript, which he subsequently put at my disposal, to fit it for publication and bring it before the world. I found it full of interesting details of life among the mountains, and of the singular castes and races, both white men and red men, among whom he had sojourned. It bore, too, throughout, the impress of his character, his bonhommie, his kindliness of spirit, and his susceptibility to the grand and beautiful. That manuscript has formed the staple of the following work. I have occasionally interwoven facts and details, gathered from various sources, especially from the conversations and journals of some of the captain's contemporaries, who were actors in the scenes he describes. I have also given it a tone and coloring drawn from my own observation, during an excursion into the Indian country beyond the bounds of civilization; as I before observed, however, the work is substantially the narrative of the worthy captain, and many of its most graphic passages are but little varied from his own language." - excerpt from the Introductory Notice by Washington Irving.…