In their first permission to the French, the Iroquois had carefully stipulated that the house to be built at Niagara should be of bark, for they had learned the danger of stone forts. Now, Le Moyne told them that he could not keep his skins dry in a bark house, and wrung from them an unwilling consent to the erection of a stone house, provided it be “no stone fort.” The authorities at once wrote to the king, asking for money to defray the expense of building a house of solid masonry. De Léry, the king’s chief engineer, who had come out to fortify Quebec and Montreal, was directed to proceed to Niagara, and to build this trading house. He decided not to put it near Joncaire’s station, which was seven miles up the river, where the rapids made further navigation impossible, but to place it at the outlet of the river into Lake Ontario. On the eastern bank of the Niagara, near its mouth, he began the erection of the stone structure which stands to-day as the oldest part of the government buildings at Fort Niagara. It took two summers in time and thirty thousand livres in money to build. When completed, the house of stone possessed four bastions erected with a massiveness of construction that makes it strong after nearly two hundred years have passed away. Charles Le Moyne, who had gained the Indians’ consent to the building of this stone house, was put in command and held it for many years. The first Charles Le Moyne came to Canada in 1654, and for a century his sons and grandsons played most important parts in the building up of the French power in the New World. Two of his sons led the attack on Schenectady, and later founded Louisiana; a third son fell in the defence of Quebec against Sir William Phips in 1690, and another in the struggle with the English for Hudson’s Bay. The second Charles Le Moyne accompanied La Barre and Denonville on their expeditions against the Iroquois, and the third established this fortified post at Niagara.