It has already been mentioned that Robert Cavelier de la Salle obtained from the king in the year 1675 a grant of the fort erected by Frontenac at Cataraqui. The conditions of the grant were that he was to reimburse the cost of construction, estimated at ten thousand livres; keep it in good repair; maintain a sufficient garrison; employ twenty men for two years in clearing the land conceded to him in the neighbourhood; provide a priest or friar to perform divine service and administer the sacraments; form villages of Indians and French; and have all his lands cleared and improved within twenty years. On these terms he was to have four square leagues of land, that is to say, eight leagues in length along the river and lake front, east and west of the fort, by half a league in depth, together with the islands opposite. But what was of most value in a pecuniary sense, and what he depended on to compensate his outlay, was the right of hunting and fishing in the neighbouring region, and of trading with the Indians. To what extent La Salle actually developed the property thus conceded to him is a matter of dispute. The Abbe Faillon, who perhaps has some little animus against him, says that he did nothing worth mentioning towards establishing such a colony as the king intended. The king, on the other hand, when granting La Salle authority to undertake explorations in the direction of the Mississippi speaks approvingly of the work he had done on his concession. The information may have been derived from La Salle himself, who went to France in the autumn of 1677 to obtain sanction for his proposed expedition; but it is hardly likely that he would lay altogether false information before the minister for submission to the king. It seems to be certain that he did at least put the fort in a good condition of defence. He pulled down the old one, which consisted merely of a wooden palisade banked up with earth and having a circumference of one hundred and twenty yards, and replaced it by one having a circumference of seven hundred and twenty yards, and protected by four stone bastions.