FIVE FORTS OF WINNIPEG. 143 



miuatioii was reached. An iuveutoiy was made of all the Fort property, and ou July 20th, 

 1816, the colonists caj)itnlated, the fort was formally handed over, aud a receipt given 

 by Cuthbert Grrant, acting for the North-West Company. Thus, in the varying for- 

 tunes of war. Fort Douglas, for a time, became the possession of the company, whose Fort 

 Gibraltar was now a thing of the past. Festivities of an extravagant kind took place over 

 the victory. Half-breeds and Indians held high carnival. Partners and their dependants 

 from different parts of the country, rushed to Fort Douglas, which the Nor'-AVesters held 

 for the summer at least. The sorrowful, ill-fated colonists again took boat down the 

 Eiver to seek Hudson Bay. There being for the time no disturbance, the Nor'-West part- 

 ners, set earnestly to work and completed Fort Douglas out of the material brought a few 

 weeks before from their own dismantled Fort. 



The news of the battle, of the death of the Clovernor, aud of the seizure of Fort Doug- 

 las, caused the greatest excitement in Montreal, when the sad intelligence reached the 

 headquarters of the North-West Company. Lord Selkirk with his family, had spent the 

 winter there, and now was on his way np the lakes to his beleaguered colony. He had 

 with him one hundred disbanded soldiers antl thirty canoe men, who were to settle on 

 Red River, and act as preservers of the peace. He arrived at Fort William in the autumn 

 of 1816, spent the winter there, and in March, a portion of his settlers coming over the 

 Rainy River route, left Lake of the Woods on snow-shoes, crossed the intervening country, 

 and recaptured Fort Douglas in the spring of 181V, seemingly without much opposition. 

 As soon as navigation opened. Lord Selkirk arrived (1817) at Fort Douglas, aud laid the 

 foundations for the colony firm and sure. This was the last of the coullict. Fort Douglas 

 continued to be used as Governor's residence for years, though as we shall see, it soon 

 ceased to be used for mercantile purposes. Governor Alexander Macdonell — called the 

 " Grasshopper Governor," in allusion to the scourge occurring in his time — had charge 

 from 1816-22. He was succeeded by Governor Bulger, a daring officer, and who is said to 

 have left a collection of letters of great interest abovrt Red River, known as the " Bulger 

 Papers." He was Governor when Ma,)or Long's expedition passed down the river in 1823. 

 The fort property was afterwards sold when the Company repurchased Lord Selkirk's 

 rights, and was bought by Mr. Robert Logan, who occupied some of the buildings till 

 1854. Not a stick or stone of it now remains. 



Old Fort Garry. — It is well known that the Hudson's Bay and North-West 

 Companies, brought near the verge of bankruptcy, united in 1821. Just as the union 

 of the North-West and X. Y. Companies in 1804 resulted in the biiildiug of Fort Gibraltar, 

 so the union of the opposing parties now resulted in the building of a new fort. The site 

 chosen was virtually that of the destroyed Gibraltar ; it would seem to have been a little 

 further up towards the Assiniboine. Here, after the union, the stores of the Company 

 were opened, those at Fort Douglas having been closed. The situation of the old fort is 

 believed to be near the present Hudson's Bay Company mill on the Assiniboine. Origin- 

 ally, a carriage road passed in front of it along the river. The greedy river, however, 

 encroached every year ; and now a portion of what was contained within the fort has been 

 undermined and fallen away. The fort received its name from Nicholas Garry, an influen- 

 tial director of the Hiidson's Bay Company, who, in 1822, as we learn from the " Bishop of 

 Montreal's Journey to Red River," took a leading part in the management of the Company's 



