Adventures of Captain Bonneville (National Geographic Adventure Classics)

Carrying 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, " Captain James Bonneville set out for points west in 1832. He was gone nearly five years and was thought to be dead. But Bonneville had befriended a mountain man named Joseph Rutherford Walker, and the two made extensive journeys through the West, becoming the first white men to see Yosemite. Returning by a southern route across the Sierras, they discovered the Walker Pass and Utah' s Bonneville Salt Flats. Captain Bonneville enjoyed half a decade of amazing escapades and discoveries. Upon his return to civilization, he met Washington Irving, by then already an internationally recognized writer. Irving was fascinated by Bonneville' s tales and details of life among the mountains, trappers, and Native Americans. Drawing from Bonneville' s personal journals, Irving created this celebrated volume of stories in 1837. With a new introduction by series editor Anthony Brandt and a National Geographic map of Bonneville' s journey, Irving' s masterful storytelling emerges as a fresh and immediate account of a long-lost era of American history. "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville is a valuable portrait of the wonders of the West and the remarkable men who first explored it.