After waiting in Camponit for winter to end, Peter Lassen and six companions chose to travel south by ship from Fort Vancouver rather than cross the mountains. Lassen persuaded Captain Josiah Spaulding of the steamship Lausanne to land at Fort Ross, about 75 miles north of Yerba Buena near Bodega Bay, so the party could take a shortcut to the Sacramento Valley and Sutter’s Ranch. When the Lausanne reached Fort Ross on July 16 or 17, 1840, the group was welcomed by the mainly Russian inhabitants, and the ship then moved to Bodega Harbor. Because California belonged to Mexico in 1840, Mexican authorities would not allow Lassen and his companions to remain, and on July 26 the Lausanne sailed on to San Francisco without them, making July 25 or 26, 1840, the first time Lassen set foot in California despite the prohibition. A few days later, General Vallejo granted permission for five of the men to stay, and by mid-August they arrived at Sutter’s Ranch near present-day Sacramento. Two weeks later, Lassen and William Wiggins left, stopped at Yerba Buena, where Wiggins observed only six houses, then continued to San Jose, a town of 500 inhabitants, where Lassen worked as a blacksmith through the winter. He later became supervisor and builder of his own mill in Santa Cruz, which became the first working sawmill in California, then sold it and returned to Sutter’s new fort. In the spring of 1843, after cattle were stolen by a party of immigrants, Lassen and several others, including John Bidwell, followed the Sacramento River through a region few white people had crossed, drew a map because none existed, named places along the way, found the immigrants with the stolen animals near present-day Red Bluff, and Lassen was deeply impressed by the beauty of the area.