On the first of May, 1832, Bonneville and Walker led westward a caravan of twenty wagons attended by one hundred and ten mounted trappers, hunters, and servants from the Missouri River landing where Fort Osage had once stood. Out upon the Kansas plains they went, up the Platte, to the Sweetwater, and through South Pass. In the valleys of the Green and the Snake they trapped and traded through the winter and spring of 1832-33. After the rendezvous on the Green in July, 1833, Walker was named by Bonneville to be the leader of the now famous Walker expedition to the Pacific. The reports of Jedediah Smith on his trip of 1826 to California and the much talked about adventures of Smith, as discussed by the mountain men, seem to have been decisive factors which influenced Bonneville to authorize this ambitious undertaking. The fact that a scant 4,000 pounds of beaver was all he had to show for his campaign of the past year also may have contributed to his determination to take another fling at exploration, trapping, and the trade. Walker’s California party consisted of fifty men, with four horses each, a year’s supply of food, ammunition, and trade goods. Zenas Leonard and George Nidever, two free trappers who had joined the Bonneville crowd at the Green River rendezvous, were selected as members of the Walker party. Both were to become conspicuous in California history by virtue of their writings. Because Walker was the first white man to lead a party of explorers to the brink of Yosemite’s cliffs, he is given a first place in Yosemite history. It is worthwhile to record here some of the appraisals of Walker, the man, made by his contemporaries and companions. Zenas Leonard, clerk of the Walker party, wrote, “Mr. Walker was a man well calculated to undertake a business of this kind [the California expedition]. He was well hardened to the hardships of the wilderness—understood the character of the Indians very well ... was kind and affable to his men, but at the same time at liberty to command without giving offence ... and to explore unknown regions was his chief delight.” Washington Irving said of Walker, “About six feet high, strong built, dark complexioned, brave in spirit, though mild in manners. He had resided for many years in Missouri, on the frontier; had been among the earliest adventurers to Santa Fe, where he went to trap beaver, and was taken by the Spaniards. Being liberated, he engaged with the Spaniards and Sioux Indians in a war against the Pawnees; then returned to Missouri, and had acted by turns as sheriff, trader, trapper, until he was enlisted as a leader by Captain Bonneville.” Hubert Howe Bancroft, the historian, estimated, “Captain Joe Walker was one of the bravest and most skillful of the mountain men; none was better acquainted than he with the geography or the native tribes of the Great Basin; and he was withal less boastful and pretentious than most of his class.”