19th Century wood engraving, bookplate print - "Scene At The Mouth Of The Russian River" ( California ). Fishing boat on the Russian River where it flows into the Pacific Ocean, California, USA. 9" X 12". The river takes its name from the Russian-American Company which explored the area in the early 19th century. The Russian River is a southward-flowing river that drains 1,485 sq miles of Sonoma and Mendocino counties in Northern California. 'The entrance to the mouth of Russian River is quite picturesque. There are numbers of schooners and sloops laden with red-wood, some going north, to Portland - others south, to San Francisco, Monterey, and as far down as the Isthmus'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant, D. Appleton and Company, New York, publishers, 1872.