The little colony managed to exist, but its difficulties were aggravated from time to time by the ravages of clouds of grasshoppers which devastated the territories and brought the people to the verge of starvation.  In March, 1821, the North-west Company made over all their property to the older company, which now reigned supreme throughout the territories.  All doubts as to their rights were set at rest by an act of parliament giving them a monopoly of trade for twenty-one years in what were then generally known as the Indian territories, that vast region which lay beyond the confines of Rupert’s Land, and was not strictly covered by the charter of 1670.  This act was re-enacted in 1838 for another twenty-one years.  No further extension, however, was ever granted, as an agitation had commenced in Canada by 1859 for the surrender of the company’s privileges and the opening up of the territories, so long a great “lone land,” to enterprise and settlement.  When the two rival companies were united, Mr., afterwards Sir, George Simpson, became governor, and he continued to occupy that position until 1860, when he died in his residence at Lachine, near Montreal.  This energetic man largely extended the geographical knowledge of the wide dominions entrusted to his charge, though like all the servants of the company, he discouraged settlement and minimised the agricultural capabilities of the country, when examined in 1857 before a committee of the English house of commons.  In 1837 the company purchased from Lord Selkirk’s heirs all their rights in Assiniboia.  The Scotch settlers and the French half-breeds were now in close contiguity to each other on the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.  The company established a simple form of government for the maintenance of law and order.  In the course of time, their council included not only their principal factors and officials, but a few persons selected from the inhabitants.  On the whole, law and order prevailed in the settlements, although there was always latent a certain degree of sullen discontent against the selfish rule of a mere fur company, invested with such great powers.  The great object of the company was always to keep out the pioneers of settlement, and give no information of the value of the land and resources of their vast domain.

Some years before the federation of the British-American provinces the public men of Canada had commenced an agitation against the company, with the view of relieving from its monopoly a country whose resources were beginning to be known.  Colonial delegates on several occasions interviewed the imperial authorities on the subject, but no practical results were obtained until federation became an accomplished fact.  Then, at length, the company recognised the necessity of yielding to the pressure that was brought to bear upon them by the British government, at a time when the interests of the empire as well as of the new Dominion demanded the abolition of a monopoly so hostile to the conditions