Early in 1808, Colonel Brock left Quebec to take command in Montreal. Shortly afterwards he was appointed acting brigadier-general by Sir James Craig, an appointment which was confirmed in September. In a letter to his brother, Brock wrote that, although General Ferguson had been newly appointed major-general, he thought he would not likely come, as was intended, to Canada, but that he (Brock) would succeed him both in rank and command at Quebec. Montreal, in 1808, was both a lively and a hospitable place. The magnates of the North-West Company were established there, and entertained with a lavishness that was not to be found elsewhere. The fame of the Beaver Club has remained unrivalled in Canada. Montreal, the old Ville Marie, once the fortified Indian stronghold of Hochelaga, was founded in 1642 by Maisonneuve. Soon afterwards the hospital or Hôtel Dieu was established by Madame de Bouillon, and in 1650, the cathedral of Notre Dame was founded by Marguerite de Bourgeois. Montreal can therefore claim an antiquity almost equal to that of Quebec. For more than fifty years a struggle continued {100} between the French settlers and their Indian foes. At one most critical time in 1660, the whole island, up to the palisades that surrounded the town, was swept by war parties, and only the sacrifice of Dollard (sometimes called Daulac) and his seventeen associates, saved the place. In 1665 the Marquis de Tracy arrived with the Carignan Regiment and established forts at Ste. Thérèse, Sorel, and Chambly, naming the two latter places after officers in his regiment. Montreal soon became the centre of the great fur trade with the North-West. Unlike its sister city, Quebec, whose narrow, steep streets with the bristling fortifications that towered above, kept the characteristics of a century before, Montreal, by 1808, had already put on the appearance of a modern town. The old wall that had once surrounded it had been removed in 1801. On the banks of the river St. Lawrence, which flowed around it, were fine warehouses in which were stored the costly skins destined for the markets of Frankfort and St. Petersburg. There were colleges and churches and taverns, too, of no mean repute, and scattered here and there were the fine mansions and spacious gardens of the "Lords of the North." Here lived James McGill, to whom the Montreal of to-day owes its famous university. He had a beautiful house on the slope of Mount Royal, which he bequeathed with an endowment of ten thousand pounds to trustees for the purpose of {101} establishing an English college--the first in Canada. Here also lived William McGillivray and Simon McTavish, whose names are familiar in the annals of the "great company." [Sidenote: Brock at Montreal]