In Distant Waters (37 page)

Descriptions of Russian merchant ships may be found in the pages of Dana, who met them in San Francisco in the 1840s, shortly before the abandonment of the posts at Bodega Bay (Fort
Ross) and the Columbia River, and some twenty-odd years before the sale of Alaska to the United States. Several countries laid a spurious claim to this wild and lovely coast in the early years of the last century and it is fascinating to speculate upon the turn of events had the presence of gold been known forty years earlier than it is generally thought to have been. It is not inconceivable that its presence was known to a few who, for reasons of their own, wished it to remain secret.