Later, in 1812, when the Russian coasters were refused watering privileges at San Francisco, the Russian American Company bought land near Bodega, and settled their famous Ross, or California colony, with cannon, barracks, arsenal, church, workshops, and sometimes a population of eight hundred Kadiak Indians. Here provisions were gathered for Sitka, and hunters despatched for sea-otter of the south. The massacres on the Yukon and the clashes with the Hudson's Bay traders are a story by themselves. The other doings of these "Sea Voyagers" became matters of international history when they tried to exclude American and British traders from the Pacific. The fur hunters in the main were only carrying out the far-reaching plans of Shelikoff, who originated the charter for the company; but even Shelikoff could hardly foresee that the country which the Russian government was willing to sell to the United States in 1867 for seven million dollars, would produce more than twice that during a single year in gold. To-day all that remains to Russia of these sea voyagers' plundering are two small islands, Copper and Bering in Bering Sea.
[1] Coxe and Müller are the two great authorities on the early Russian fur trade. Data on later days can be found in abundance in Krusenstern's _Voyage_, London, 1813; Kohl's _History_, London, 1862; Langsdorff's _Travels_, London, 1813; Stejneger's _Contributions to Smithsonian_, 1884, and _Report on Commander Islands_; Elliott's _Our Arctic Province_; Dall's _Alaska_; Veniaminof's _Letters on Aleutians_; Cleveland's _Voyages_, 1842, Nordenskjöld's _Voyage of the Vega_; Macfie's _Vancouver Island_; Ivan Petroff's _Report on Alaska_, 1880; Lisiansky's _Voyage Round the World_; Sauer's _Geographical Account of Expedition to Northern Parts_; Kotzebue's _Voyages of Discovery_, 1819, and _New Voyage_, 1831; Chappe d'Auteroche's _Siberia_ and Kracheninnikof's _Kamchatka_, 1764; Simpson's _Voyage Round World_, 1847; Burney's _Voyages_; Gmelin's _Siberia_, Paris, 1767; Greenhow's _Oregon_; Pallas's _Northern Settlements_; Broughton's _Voyage_, 1804; Berg's _Aleutian Islands_; Bancroft's _Alaska_; _Massa. Hist. Coll._, 1793-1795; _U. S. Congressional Reports_ from 1867; Martin's _Hudson's Bay Territories_, London, 1849.