[Footnote: Schafer, Pacific Northwest, chap. viii.] From these
Oregon posts as centers they passed as far south as the region of
Great Salt Lake, in what was then Mexican territory.
While the British traders occupied the northwest coast the Spaniards
held California. Although they established the settlement of San
Francisco in the year of the declaration of American independence,
settlement grew but slowly. The presidios, the missions, with their
Indian neophytes, and the cattle ranches feebly occupied this
imperial domain. Yankee trading-ships gathered hides and tallow at
San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco; Yankee whalers, seal-
hunters, and fur-traders sought the northwest coast and passed on to
China to bring back to Boston and Salem the products of the far
east. [Footnote: R. H. Dana, Two Years before the Mast.] But Spain's
possession was not secure. The genius for expansion which had
already brought the Russians to Alaska drew them down the coast even
to California, and in 1812 they established Fort Ross at Bodega Bay,
a few miles below the mouth of Russian River, north of San
Francisco.
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