The foundation of the story of Anian is said to lie in the voyage of the Portuguese navigator, Caspar de Cortereal, in 1500-1505, who, on reaching Hudson's Bay in quest of a passage to India, imagined he had found it, naming his discovery "in honour of two brothers who accompanied him." [Sidenote: Russians on the west coast.] Meanwhile Russian hunters and traders from Okhotsk were extending their expedition from the north-east coast of Siberia to the north-west coast of North America. A Russian Government expedition started from Okhotsk in 1790, under the command of Captain Billings, an Englishman in the Russian service, and to Captain Taryteheff, one of the members, are due important researches on the hydrography and ethnology of these countries. The first attempt at permanent settlement was due to three Russian traders, Shelekoff and the two Golikoffs, who fitted out two or three vessels to be sent to "the land of Alaska, also called America; to islands known or unknown, for the purpose of trading in furs; of exploring the country and entering into relations with the inhabitants." Their first expedition started in 1781, and the first settlement was founded on the Island of Kodiak. The authority of the Russian Government was thus established on this and the adjacent islands. In 1790, Shelekoff, then residing in Irkoutsk, sent out a merchant named Baranoff to govern the new colony.[85] Thus the knowledge that they were being pressed in on opposite sides by the Canadian traders on the south and east, and by Russians on the north and west, reached the Company at the same time. As a matter of fact, the knowledge of Baranoff's enterprise and the energy with which it was being prosecuted did not come before the committee until October, 1794; and it was in that very month that the report of Mackenzie's journey reached them. The next few years were devoted to devising and considering schemes to counteract these two growing competitors--to oppose the further progress of the Russians on the one hand, and to combat the North-Westers on the other. For twenty-seven years Baranoff continued to be the controlling mind of the new Russian trading enterprise. Shelekoff died in 1795; and his widow continued the business, and upon combining with the Milnikoff Company it increased gradually in wealth. The charter of these joint enterprises, to which the name of the Russian-American Fur Company was given, was signed in August, 1798, and confirmed at St. Petersburg in 1799. That year witnessed the settlement of New Archangel, on the island of Sitka. The consequences of this increased output were not, however, felt in the fur-markets at Leipsic. Europe was convulsed by war, and Napoleon had laid an embargo on British goods. The furs, therefore, accumulated for several years in the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company without finding a mart.