78 GEOEGE BEYCE ON THK ASSINIBOINE EIVEE AND ITS POETS. 



mouth of the Qu'Appelle, at its junction with the Assiniboine, was erected Fort Ellice, so 

 called after the prominent fur trader Edward Ellice, formerly of the X Y Company. The 

 forts at the mouth of the Souris, at one time so numerous and so important, fell, after the 

 conflict of the companies, out of sight, and perished either by fire or by disuse. The 

 union of the companies led to the building of the first Fort Garry on the Assiniboine, 

 south of the site of the present Hudson's Bay Company mill in the City of Winnipeg. In 

 1835 the second Fort G-arry was begun under Governor Alexander Christie, and stood 

 facing the Assiniboine at the point still marked by the ruined front gate west of Main 

 street in the City of Winnipeg. It was the centre of much of the history of the country 

 until its sale in the year 1881-82, when by an act of vandalism it was pulled down, and 

 its walls and bastions which might have spoken to us of the scenes of the fur trade and 

 of the Selkirk colony, are to be seen no more. The Assiniboine is now the abode of the 

 farmer ; the fur trader has deserted it for the far north. But the record of a century and 

 a half, including the events of the French, the Nor'-Wester and the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany movements, will ever be of interest to us; and this, though as Governor Masson 

 says, in closing his sketch of the North-West Company, " The Lords of the lakes and forests 

 have passed away." 



