Explorers: The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, Digested from His Journals by Washington Irving

Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville left the east for California in May of 1832. No one heard from him, and many people assumed he was dead (or AWOL). Three years later he returned. Washington Irving (Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle) met Bonneville, bought the rights to his journal, and after editing it and recasting it in the third person, published it. It is probably the most literate, readable description of the fur trapper era.