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 he 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. It bore, too, throughout, "the impress of his character, his bonhommie, his kindliness of spirit, and his susceptibility to the grand and beautiful," according to Irving. Bonneville's journals formed the backbone of Irving's work, which was widely lauded 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............................... Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 - November 28, 1859) was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846. He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., serialized from 1819-20. He continued to publish regularly-and almost always successfully-throughout his life, and just eight months before his death (at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York), completed a five-volume biography of George Washington. Irving, along with James Fenimore Cooper, was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Francis Jeffrey, and Walter Scott. Also, as the United States' first internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement...............