Strangely enough, the Russians failed to cross the coastal mountains either in Alaska or further to the south. They contented themselves with the hunting of marine animals, especially the sea otter, sending the skins back to Siberia for Asiatic distribution. They apparently did not realize that the American continent could be crossed by land, a peculiar oversight when we remember their rapid crossing of the whole of Asia. Rezanov had hoped to make Kodiak a center of Russian culture. He had come to Russian America by sea from St. Petersburg and brought with him a large library of books for an academy which he proposed to establish. Apparently Shelikov had spread excessive stories of the Russian achievements, for Kodiak was only a wretched frontier village and not an embryonic metropolis, Slava Rossii, as he boasted. Rezanov’s collection remained in Kodiak until its destruction by fire on July 18, 1943. The Russian Orthodox Church also sent a mission to the colony. The monks, largely from Valamo, were devoted men and at least one was a martyr. The greatest of the Russian clergy was Ivan Venyaminov, later Archbishop Innokenty, Metropolitan of Moscow and one of the great figures of the Russian Church. This mission converted the majority of the Aleuts and Eskimos in the neighborhood and the Russian language was long the common speech on most of the Aleutian Islands. Russian expansion thus had begun to take shape seriously at about the same time the Americans began to push westward. After buying the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the northwest. In 1806 the expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia River. Then followed the settlement of Astoria by agents of the American fur trader, John Jacob Astor. By the time the Russians were ready to advance to the south, the Americans were established in the center of the area and the Russian colonies never formed a solid belt on the west coast. For some reason the Russians did not try to eliminate the Americans and the southern settlements began to wither away from inability to expand. In 1841, Fort Ross was sold to a group of Americans and the Russians withdrew northward.