the Souris and Assiniboine, a fort on Lake Winnipeg (1795), another on the Assiniboine (1796), and it is asserted that even on the Red River a Hudson's Bay Company fort was built in 1799.

In the year 1812 a new element entered into the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company. This Conflict was the colonization movement of the Earl of the of Selkirk. Lord Selkirk was the controlling Companies. spirit of the Hudson's Bay Company, having bought much of their stock. His great aim was to build up a colony, but though the colony on the Red River was to be kept separate from the fur trade, yet in the eyes of their opponents they were one. Governor Miles Macdonell of the Colony, anxious for the support of his colonists, forbade the export of pemican from Red River by the Nor'-Westers, but promised to pay for what the colony required. The proclamation to this effect was issued in 1814. New misunderstandings constantly arose between the companies. Attacks, arrests, and reprisals were the commonest events in the Red River settlement. At length came, in 1816, the skirmish of "Seven Oaks," near Fort Douglas, where Governor Semple, Macdonell's successor, was killed.

Lord Selkirk, after visiting Red River in 1817, returned to Canada. Arrests were made on account of the disturbances which had taken place in the upper country. At the instance of Lord Selkirk a number of Nor'-Westers were tried at York, Upper Canada, and an action was brought against the Earl himself in Sandwich, Upper Canada, in 1818, in which, by the influence of the Nor'-Westers, the verdict, with damages, was given against his lordship.

The affairs of the two companies were becoming desperate. The whole North-Western territories were in confusion, and trade was well-nigh ruined. Lord Selkirk died in 1820 in France; but largely through the efforts of the Hon. Edward Ellice, a reconciliation between the hostile companies took place and a union was formed on the 26th of March, 1821, under the name of the older

Sir George
Simpson.

or Hudson's Bay Company. The new company, combining the stability of its English and the energy of its Canadian parentage, was placed under the governorship of a man of great energy and mark, well known in later years as Sir George Simpson. Born in Rossshire, young Simpson had early gone to London and become a clerk in a city house. The task was a difficult one, for which the young clerk was selected in being chosen to harmonize the companies, and his secret instructions were very flexible. A man of immense determination, Simpson soon became the king of the fur-traders. With the self-possession of an emperor he was borne through the wilderness. He is said to have made the canoe journey from Montreal to the Red River forty times; and in 1841-2 crossing the continent, the experienced traveller visited the Sandwich Islands, the coast of Alaska, passed through Siberia, and made his way to London, having travelled round the world. On the introduction of a local government into the district of Assiniboia, or the Red River settlement, Governor Simpson became the president of the council. For his distinguished management of the Hudson's Bay Company affairs, and for his services to the trade of Canada, Governor Simpson was knighted, and he died in 1860, a man who would have been of mark anywhere, but developed greatly by his wellnigh forty years of responsible service.

Section II.-The Life of the Traders

There is a strange fascination about the life of the fur-trader. Placed in charge of an inland fort, surrounded and ministered to by an inferior race, and the leader of a small band of employés, his decisions must be final, and his word taken as law. As a monarch of his solitude he has great responsibility. His supply of goods must be obtained. There are places in the Yukon region where, a short time ago, nine years were needed from the time goods left London until news of their

receipt came back to London again. It required wisdom and foresight to manage a post so remote.

Often also the merchandise is sold to the Indians on credit, and though the poor savages are honest, yet such a system needs watchfulness. The Indians, too, are fickle, jealous, and complaining, and much shrewdness is required in dealing with them. The food supply is in many regions a subject of serious thought. There are places in the Hudson's Bay Company territories where the trader and his men never see a pound of flour in the year. On the bay thousands of geese are killed and salted for winter use, and form the almost exclusive food. On certain rivers a fish diet is the chief means of sustenance. In Arctic regions the reindeer or musk-ox is the mainstay, and bread and vegetables are at some Hudson's Bay Company posts unknown.

Yet it is a joyful sight to the traveller in the distant wastes of the North-West to see the fur-trader's fort, with the flag floating over it flaunting the well-known letters H.B.C. Though the forts of the fur-traders vary greatly, some being of wood, others of stone, there is a family resemblance in them all.

A well-appointed post contains a considerable enclosure. It may be from fifty to a hundred yards along each side, and is a square or often an oblong. This space is contained by a stockade, consisting of posts some twelve or fifteen feet high, driven into the earth closely side by side, and fastened by an inside breastwork. The posts or pickets are of such wood as the locality may afford. Oak is preferred if it can be had.

In the middle of one side of the enclosure is the gate, with over it very often a watch-tower or guérite as the French call it. The buildings within the stockade are arranged around the sides, having a free space in the middle. There is needed a larger building for the store or shop. Near this, or perhaps on the side opposite the gate, is seen the residence of the chief officer or bourgeois, as the Nor'-Westers called him.

Several houses, the number depending on the import

ance of the fort, are needed for the men: these also face the open square. If of sufficient importance the fort may have a blacksmith's forge, and in troublous times the smiths have charge of the two or three rusty fourpounders that frown from prominent positions upon all assailants. Kitchens, outhouses, and stables complete the buildings arranged in order around the open space. In the busy season scores of Indians, squaws, and children may be seen in groups seated on the ground in the midst of the fort, their encampment being a group of tents, bark or skin, outside the stockade.

On the site of the present city of Winnipeg there have been five forts, which may well illustrate the progress, slow though it may have been, made in the furtrade.

In 1738, Verendrye's post, Fort Rouge, was hurriedly built on a wooded point at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, and on the south side of the latter. It was merely an erection of logs, and was soon deserted.

In 1806, after the union of the North-West and X Y Companies, there was erected on the north side of the Assiniboine River at its "forks " with the Red River a considerable post, Fort Gibraltar. Its stockaded walls were about 200 yards in length on each side. While eight houses were arranged around the square, the front of the chief trader's residence extended for sixty-four feet. This fort was levelled to the ground by Governor Semple in 1816.

In the year 1812 had been begun, about a mile below Fort Gibraltar, facing on Red River, Fort Douglas, bearing Lord Selkirk's family name. Small at first, it grew to be a considerable fort. The material of Fort Gibraltar, on its destruction, and of a fort at Pembina, was floated down the river, and used in the enlargement of Fort Douglas.

About the year 1822 was built, near the former site of Fort Gibraltar, the original Fort Garry, so called from a prominent director of the Hudson's Bay Company. The

building of this fort was the result of the happy union of the North-West and the Hudson's Bay Companies. It was a strong fort, had heavy oak bastions, large and well-constructed wooden buildings, but was replaced in thirteen or fourteen years.

The Hudson's Bay Company found it necessary to relieve Lord Selkirk's heirs of the colony of obligations in which they were involved, and in 1835, the year in which a government was established at Red River, the later Fort Garry was built, to the west of the older fort, on the rising ground. Enlarged in 1852, its walls were of masonry ten or twelve feet high, with its four circular bastions, with loop-holes for cannon and firearms, and presenting on its prairie side its gateway of castellated masonry, Fort Garry had a formidable appearance.

The five forts of Winnipeg are now things of the past, but they are types of the advance made in exploration and trade. York Factory and Prince of Wales or Churchill Fort on Hudson Bay saw similar mutations. Lower Fort Garry, Cumberland House, Edmonton, Fort Ellice have each their tale to tell; but, being the centres of accessible or fertile regions, their glory as fur-trading posts has passed away.

Near the mouth of the Souris River the traveller up the Assiniboine, into which the Souris flows, may trace the outlines of three forts. These represent the three rival movements of which we have spoken as in existence at the beginning of this century. Brandon House, the first of these, was the fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the site of every building of it could long after be traced. Less distinct, but still quite visible, were the ruins of Assiniboine House and Fort à la Souris, the rival posts of the North-West and X Y Companies.

On Hudson Bay the York Factory of 1812 was the successor of several forts which had been built in its neighbourhood. The fort of this date was an enclosure 400 feet long by 300 feet wide, and contained a considerable" pile of buildings." The master's residence was, we are told, a house of two stories in height, badly