In 1727 Governor Burnet called the attention of the councillors of the province to the fact that he had established a post at Oswego (the name was borrowed from the Iroquois), and added that he had sent a captain, two lieutenants and sixty soldiers to the point and that he intended to keep a force there always. This announcement came to the ear of the governor of New France and so incensed him that he sent a letter to Governor Burnet asking that official why, in opposition to the plain stipulations of the Treaty of Ghent which forbade the erection of works of defence or offence, he had constructed and manned this fort. Governor Burnet replied by calling attention to the French building of “Oneagorah” or Niagara, thus showing that the practice of justifying a soiled pot by pointing to a black kettle is of ancient foundation. Anyhow, Governor Burnet went cheerfully on with his fortifying of Oswego, though Governor Beauharnais sent several expeditions to harass and deter his workmen. This first fortification at Oswego was of a very simple character. Beauharnais complained that it was “a redoubt with galleries and full of loop-holes and other works belonging to fortifications,” but Burnet merely says that the “walls were four feet thick of large good stone” and finds no other details to dilate upon. In 1741 the colony authorized the expenditure of 600 pounds, sterling, to “erect a sufficient stone wall at a proper distance around the trading house at Oswego, either in a triangular or quadrangular form, as the ground will best admit of, with a bastion or block-house in each corner to flank the curtain.” Later on we find that complaints were made to the General Assembly that the contractors who had the job in hand were using clay instead of stone and that they were skimping their work fearfully in order to line their pockets generously. This is one of the very earliest public scandals of New York State and one that seems to have eluded the muck-raker so far. The post was abandoned between the years 1744 and 1755 as, on the outbreak of hostilities with Canada, its occupants feared that they could not in their exposed and unsupported position withstand an attack in force from Quebec. As the years went on, however, the post of Oswego became increasingly valuable to the English and they in turn became far more able to hold their own. Situated as it was between Niagara and the ocean,--between the back country of the French and their metropolis of Quebec,--it fairly broke the back of the long wriggling French line of settlements, which extended from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi.