Within the limits of the present city of Toronto, La Gallissonière then built Fort Rouille[38] as an attempt to control the trade of the Indians of the North, who were finding their way to the English fort of Oswego which had been commenced with the consent of the Iroquois by Governor Burnet of New York, and was now a menace to the French dominion of Lake Ontario. At the other extremity lay Fort Niagara. When the French were establishing this chain of forts or posts through the West and down the Mississippi valley Fort Rouille was founded on a site even then commonly called "Fort Toronto." It does not seem ever to have been a dominant strategic point; the probabilities are there was no force stationed here worth mentioning and, possibly, it was a mere dependency of Fort Niagara. It was destroyed in 1756 to prevent its fall into the hands of the English. Little is known about the region of Toronto prior to Revolutionary times save the above records. It was untrodden wilderness. But when the fort was erected here the district in a general sense appears to have been known as "Toronto." Under French dominion it was a royal trading post and in the course of time the name attached itself to the fort and village at the neighbouring bay, which have grown to be the beautiful Capital City of Ontario. But the Toronto of the river Don and the great bay is strictly of English origin, and had for its Romulus Lieutenant-General Simcoe (1752-1806), first governor of Upper Canada. [Illustration: Lieutenant-General Simcoe.] When John Graves Simcoe arrived in Canada in 1792, the site of the present city of Toronto was covered by the primeval forest, its only human tenants being two or three families of wandering savages who had happened to select the spot for the erection of their temporary wigwams. One hundred years later we find at that very spot a magnificent city having a population of 250,000 people, a prosperous and enterprising community, possessed of all the comforts and appliances of modern civilisation and refinement,--and, instead of the sombre, impenetrable wilderness, the most wealthy and populous city of Upper Canada, with streets and private dwellings, and public edifices that will compare favourably with those of many other cities which have had centuries for their development. For its rapid rise to its present eminence Toronto is almost exclusively indebted to its admirable commercial position, its advantages in that respect having been appreciated by the far-seeing sagacity of Governor Simcoe, when selecting the site for a capital.