Toronto owed much to him, but not under its present name. The name Toronto had been borne in old times by Lake Simcoe, and on the site of the present city of Toronto the French had in 1749[207] built a fort, named Fort Rouillé. The place had come to be known as Toronto, but in 1792[208] the new name of York came into vogue, and in the autumn of the following year, 1793, Simcoe reported that that name had been officially adopted ‘with due celebrity’, in honour of the successful storming of the French camp at Famars near Valenciennes by the force under the command of the Duke of York on the 23rd of May, 1793. It was not until 1834, when the city was incorporated, that the old name of Toronto was restored. Simcoe wrote of Toronto Harbour as ‘the proper naval arsenal of Lake Ontario’; but it was not here that he would have placed the seat of government. Strongly convinced of the necessity of opening communication between Lake Ontario and the upper lakes, without making the long round by the waters of Lake Erie and the Straits of Detroit, in 1793 he explored the peninsula between the three lakes of Ontario, Erie and Huron; and on a river, running westward into Lake St. Clair, known at that date as the La Tranche river and afterwards as the Thames[209], a place which was christened London and where there is now a city with 40,000 inhabitants, seemed to him to be the most suitable site for the political centre of Upper Canada. His view was that the seat of government should be inland, presumably because it would be more central in respect to the three lakes, and also because it would be further removed from the danger of raids from the neighbouring territory of the then unfriendly republic. It is interesting to note that, in a dispatch expressing an opinion to the above effect, Simcoe added that sooner or later the Canadas might be divided into three instead of two provinces and Montreal be made the centre of an intermediate government. Dorchester held, as against Simcoe, that Toronto should be the seat of government, and his view prevailed. The Legislature of Upper Canada met at Newark for the last time in May, 1796, shortly before the fort of Niagara on the opposite side of the river was handed over to the Americans,[210] and from 1797 onwards, Simcoe having left in the meanwhile, it met at Toronto. [Sidenote: Friction between Dorchester and Simcoe.]