The site of the original French stockade, established here in the middle of the last century, was nearly at the middle point between the landing-place of the United States force in 1813, and the existing Fort. West of the white cut-stone Barracks, several earthworks and grass-grown excavations still mark the spot. These ruins, which we often visited when they were much more extensive and conspicuous than they are now, were popularly designated "The Old French Fort." It is interesting to observe the probable process by which the appellation "Toronto" came to be attached to the Trading-post here. Its real name, as imposed by the French authorities, was Fort Rouillé, from a French colonial minister of that name, in 1749-54. This we learn from a despatch of M. de Longeuil, Governor-in-Chief of Canada in 1752. And "Toronto," at that period, according to contemporaneous maps, denoted Lake Simcoe and the surrounding region. Thus in Carver's Travels through North America in 1766-8, in p. 172, we read, "On the north-west part of this lake [Ontario], and to the south of Lake Huron, is a tribe of Indians called the Mississagués, whose town is denominated Toronto, from the lake [_i. e._ Lake Simcoe] on which it lies, but they are not very numerous." This agrees with Lahontan's statements and map, in 1687. What Carver says of the fewness of the native inhabitants is applicable only to the state of things in his day. The fatal irruption of the Iroquois from the south had then taken place, and the whole of the Lake Simcoe or Toronto region had been made a desert. Before that irruption, the peninsula included between Notawasaga Bay, Matchedash, or Sturgeon Bay, the River Severn, Lake Couchichin and Lake Simcoe was a locality largely frequented by native tribes. It was especially the head-quarters of the Wyandots or Hurons. Villages, burial-grounds, and cultivated lands abounded in it. Unusual numbers of the red men were congregated there. It was in short the place of meeting, the place of concourse, the populous region, indicated by the Huron term Toronto. In the form Toronton, the word Toronto is given by Gabriel Sagard in his "Dictionnaire de la Langue Huronne," published at Paris in 1636. With Sagard it is a kind of exclamation, signifying "Il y en a beaucoup," and it is used in relation to men. He cites as an example--"He has killed a number of S. (the initial of some hostile tribe)." "Toronton S. ahouyo." In the Vocabulary of Huron words at the end of Lahontan's second volume, the term likewise appears, but with a prefix,--A-toronton,--and is translated "Beaucoup." Sagard gives it with the prefix O, in the phrase "O-toronton dacheniquoy," "J'en mange beaucoup."