A period of surprising energy was now seen in the English Company's affairs. "Carrying the war into Africa," they in the same year met their antagonists in the heart of their own territory, by building a trading post on Rainy Lake and another in the neighbouring Red Lake district, now included in North-Eastern Minnesota. Having seized the chief points southward, the aroused Company, in the next year (1791), pushed north-westward from Cumberland House and built an establishment at Ile à la Crosse, well up toward Lake Athabasca. Crossing from Lake Winnipeg in early spring to the head waters of the Assiniboine River, the spring brigade of the Hudson's Bay Company quite outdid their rivals, and in 1794 built the historic Brandon House, at a very important point on the Assiniboine River. This post was for upwards of twenty years a chief Hudson's Bay Company centre until it was burnt. On the grassy bank of the Assiniboine, the writer some years ago found the remains of the old fort, and from the well-preserved character of the sod, was able to make out the line of the palisades, the exact size of all the buildings, and thus to obtain the ground plan. Brandon House was on the south side of the Assiniboine, about seventeen miles below the present city of Brandon. Its remains are situated on the homestead of Mr. George Mair, a Canadian settler from Beauharnois, Quebec, who settled here on July 20th, 1879. The site was well chosen at a bend of the river, having the Assiniboine in front of it on the east and partially so also on the north. The front of the palisade faced to the east, and midway in the wall was a gate ten feet wide, with inside of it a look-out tower (guérite) seven feet square. On the south side was the long store-house. In the centre had stood a building said by some to have been the blacksmith's shop. Along the north wall were the buildings for residences and other purposes. The remains of other forts, belonging to rival companies, are not far away, but of these we shall speak again. The same activity continued to exist in the following year, for in points so far apart as the Upper Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg new forts were built. The former of these was Edmonton House, built on the north branch of the Saskatchewan. The fort erected on Lake Winnipeg was probably that at the mouth of the Winnipeg River, near where Fort Alexander now stands. In 1796, another post was begun on the Assiniboine River, not unlikely near the old site of Fort de la Reine, while in the following year, as a half-way house to Edmonton on the Saskatchewan, Carlton House was erected. The Red River proper was taken possession of by the Company in 1799. Alexander Henry, junr., tells us that very near the boundary line (49 degrees N.) on the east side of the Red River, there were in 1800 the remains of a fort. Such was the condition of things, so far as the Hudson's Bay Company was concerned, at the end of the century.