A Short Time prior to the outbreak of World War I a group of scholars in St. Petersburg proposed plans to explore Alaska to rediscover the sites of the early Russian settlements. The outbreak of war, however, put an end to the effort, and it was not until ten years later that the subject of early Alaska was revived in America. About that time a report was received of the alleged founding by refugees from Novgorod, in approximately the year 1571, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, of a colony in Alaska all trace of which had been lost.