As soon as the Company could fully lay its plans, it determined to take hold in earnest of the Red River district. Accordingly we see that, under instructions from John McDonald, of Garth, a bourgeois named John Wills, who, we find, had been one of the partners of the X Y Company, erected at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, on the point of land, a fort called Fort Gibraltar. Wills was a year in building it, having under him twenty men. The stockade of this fort was made of "oak trees split in two." The wooden picketing was from twelve to fifteen feet high. The following is a list of buildings enclosed in it, with some of their dimensions. There were eight houses in all; the residence of the bourgeois, sixty-four feet in length; two houses for the servants, respectively thirty-six and twenty-eight feet long; one store thirty-two feet long; a blacksmith's shop, stable, kitchen, and an ice-house. On the top of the ice-house a watch-tower (guérite) was built. John Wills continued to live in this fort up to the time of his death a few years later. Such was the first building, so far as we know, erected on the site of the City of the Plains, and which was followed first by Fort Douglas and then by Fort Garry, the chief fort in the interior of Rupert's Land. It was to this period in the history of the United Company that Washington Irving referred when he said: "The partners held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of the Canadas almost equal to that of the East India Company over the voluptuous climes and magnificent realms of the Orient." Some years before this, a very select organization had been formed among the fur traders in Montreal. It was known as the "Beaver Club." The conditions of the membership were very strict. They were that the candidate should have spent a period of service in the "upper country," and have obtained the unanimous vote of the members. The gatherings of the Club were very notable. At their meetings they assembled to recall the prowess of the old days, the dangers of the rapids, the miraculous deliverances accomplished by their canoe men, the disastrous accidents they had witnessed. Their days of feasting were long remembered by the inhabitants of Montreal after the club had passed away. The sumptuous table of the Club was always open to those of rank or distinction who might visit Montreal, and the approval of the Club gave the entry to the most exclusive society of Montreal. Still may be met with in Montreal pieces of silverware and glassware which were formerly the property of the "Beaver Club," and even large gold medals bearing the motto, "Fortitude in Distress," used by the members of the Club on their days of celebration.