The Company still King in the North-West—Its Forts Described—Fort Garry—Fort Vancouver—Franklin—Walla Walla—Yukon—Kamloops—Samuel Black—Mountain House—Fort Pitt—Policy of the Great Company.

The Company, in yielding the sovereignty of the Great North-West to Canada, was still a king, though crown and sceptre had been taken from it. Its commercial ascendancy was no whit injured; it is still one of the greatest corporations and the greatest fur company in the world. But new interests have arisen; its pristine pride, splendour and dignity, would now be out of place. The old lion has been shorn of its mane, and his roar is now no longer heard in the Great North-West. It no longer crouches in the path of progress determined to sell dearly the smallest sacrifice of its ancient rights and privileges; it is ready to co-operate with the settler and explorer, and all its whilom enemies.

Canada's debt to the Company.

Yet, since 1871, its history has not been without many stirring passages. Its long record of steady work, enterprise, and endurance, has never been greater. Its commanding influence with the Indians, and with a large number of the colonists, has enabled it to assist the authorities in many ways and often in forwarding the public interests, suppressing disorder and securing the good-will of the Red men who inhabit Canada. The Great Dominion owes much to the Great Company.

The posts of the Company reach from the stern coasts of Labrador to the frontiers of Alaska, and throughout this enormous region it yet controls the traffic with the aborigines. To-day there are one hundred and twenty-six posts at which this active trade is conducted, besides those numerous wintering stations or outposts, which migrate according to circumstances and mercantile conditions.

Latter-day forts of the Company.

The forts of the Company in Rupert's Land and on the Pacific, with few exceptions, all resembled each other. When permanent, they were surrounded by palisades about one hundred yards square. The pickets were of poles and logs ten or fifteen inches in diameter, sunk into the ground and rising fifteen or twenty feet above it. Split slabs were sometimes used instead of round poles; and at two diagonally opposite corners, raised above the tops of the pickets, two wooden bastions were placed so as to command a view of the country. From two to six guns were mounted in each of these bastions—four six or twelve-pounders, each with its aperture like the port-hole of a ship. The ground floor beneath served as a magazine. Within the pickets were erected houses, according to necessity, store and dwelling being most conspicuous.

The older forts have already been described. When Fort Garry was constructed it became the Company's chief post and headquarters. High stone walls, having round towers pierced for cannon at the corners, enclosed a square wherein were substantial wooden buildings, including the storehouses, dwellings, the Governor's residence and the gaol. Some distance below Fort Garry, on Red River, was Stone Fort, which comprised about four acres, with numerous buildings.

The chief establishment of the Saskatchewan district was Fort Edmonton. It was of sexagonal form, with pickets, battlemented gateways and bastions. Here were the usual buildings, including the carpenter's shop, blacksmith's forge and windmill. At Fort Edmonton were made and repaired, boats, carts, sleighs, harness and other articles and appliances for the annual voyage to York Factory, and for traffic between posts. There was also here a large and successful farm, where wheat, barley and vegetables were raised in abundance.

How different was Fort Franklin, a rough, pine-log hut on the shore of Great Bear Lake, containing a single apartment eighteen by twenty feet! It was roofed with sticks and moss, and the interstices between the logs were filled with mud.

Fort Vancouver.

In 1825 was built Fort Vancouver, the metropolitan establishment of the Company on the Pacific. It stood on the north side of the Columbia River, six miles above the eastern mouth of the Willamette. At first located at the highest point of some sloping land, about a mile from the river, this site was found disadvantageous to transport and communication, and the fort was moved a few years later to within a quarter of a mile of the Columbia. The plan presented the familiar parallelogram, but much larger than usual, of about seven hundred and fifty feet in length and five hundred in breadth. The interior was divided into two courts, with about forty buildings, all of wood, except the powder magazine, which was of stone. In the centre, facing the main entrance, stood the Governor's residence, with the dining-room, smoking-room, and public sitting-room or bachelors' hall, the latter serving also for a museum of Indian relics and other curiosities. Single men, clerks and others, made the bachelors' hall their place of resort, but artisans and servants were not admitted. The residence was the only two-storey house in the fort, and before its door were mounted two old eighteen-pounders. Two swivel guns stood before the quarters of the chief factor. A prominent position was occupied by the Roman Catholic chapel, to which the majority of the fort's inmates resorted, the dining-hall serving for the smaller number of Church of England worshippers. The other buildings were dwellings for officers and men, school and warehouses, retail stores and artisan shops. The interior of the dwellings exhibited, as a rule, an unpainted pine-board panel, with bunks for bedsteads, and a few other simple pieces of furniture.

Another post on the Pacific, of different character and greater strength, was Fort Walla Walla. It stood on the site of Fort Nez PercÉ, which was established when the Indians attacked Ogden's party of fur-traders here in 1818. The assault was repelled; but it was found necessary as a safeguard to rear this retreat. Fort Walla Walla was built of adobe and had a military establishment.

A strong fort was Fort Rupert, on the north-east coast of Vancouver Island. For a stockade, huge pine trees were sunk into the ground and fastened together on the inside with beams. Round the interior ran a gallery, and at two opposite corners were flanking bastions mounting four nine-pounders. Within were the usual shops and buildings, while smaller stockades protected the garden and out-houses.

Fort Yukon was the most remote post of the Company. It was beyond the line of Russian America, and consequently invited comparison with the smaller and meaner Russian establishments. Its commodious dwellings for officers and men had smooth floors, open fire-places, glazed windows, and plastered walls. Its gun room, fur press, ice and meat wells were the delight and astonishment of visitors, white and red.

After the treaty of 1846, by which the United States obtained possession of Oregon territory, the headquarters of the Company on the Pacific Coast were transferred from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria. This post was enclosed one hundred yards square by cedar pickets twenty feet high. At the north-east and south-west corners were octagonal bastions mounted with six six-pounders. It had been founded three years earlier as a trading post and depot for whalers, and possessed more than three hundred acres under cultivation, besides a large dairy farm, from which the Russian colonies in Alaska received supplies.

Old Fort Kamloops was first called Fort Thompson, having been begun by David Thompson, astronomer of the North-West Company, on his overland journey from Montreal to Astoria, by way of Yellowhead Pass, in 1810. It was the capital of the Thompson River district, and one of the oldest in all the Oregon region. After Thompson, hither came Alexander Ross, who, in 1812, conducted operations there on behalf of Astor's Pacific Fur Company. After the coalition in 1821, the veteran fur-trader, John McLeod, was in charge of the Thompson River district. Then came Ermatinger, who presided at Kamloops in 1828, when Governor Simpson visited the fort and harangued the neighbouring Indians, beseeching them to be "honest, temperate and frugal; to love their friends, the fur-traders, and above all to bring in their heaps of peltries, and receive therefor the goods of the Company."

Legend of Kamloops.

The post was not without thrilling legends and abundance of romance. It was here that the Company's officer in command, Samuel Black, in 1840, challenged his brother Scot, and guest, David Douglas, the wandering botanist, to fight a duel, because the latter bluntly, one night, over his rum and dried salmon, had stigmatized the Honourable Adventurers as "not possessing a soul above a beaver skin." Black repelled in fury such an assertion; but Douglas refused to fight. He took his departure, only to meet his death shortly afterwards by falling into a pit at Hawaii, while homeward bound.

If this was the fate of the calumniator of the Company, that of its defender was not less tragic; for soon after his display of loyalty, while residing at Fort Kamloops, he was assassinated by the nephew of a friendly neighbouring chief, named Wanquille, "for having charmed his uncle's life away." Black's successor, John Tod, built a new fort on the opposite side of the river, which differed but little from the later fortresses of the Company. There were seven houses, including stores, dwellings and shops, enclosed in palisades fifteen feet in height, with gates on two sides and bastions at two opposite angles.

Early in 1848 a small post was erected by the Company on the Fraser River, near a village of the Lachincos, adjacent to the rapids ascended by Alexander Anderson the previous year. The fort was called Yale, in honour of Chief Factor Yale, who was at that time in charge of Fort Langley. It was the only post on that wild stream, the Fraser, between Langley and Alexandria, a distance of some three hundred miles. Two causes led to its erection: the Waiilatpu massacre in 1847, and the conclusion of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which placed the boundary line several degrees north of the Lower Columbia.

Father Lacombe.