The Governor and Council first laid out and commenced the erection of a regular fortification on the extreme southern point of Manhattan Island. The engineer was Krijn Frederickje, and it was begun in 1626, was not finished in July 1627, as de Rasieres tells us, but was probably completed at the end of 1627. Its predecessor, though called a fort, was simply a stockaded trading house. This, however, was a regular work of four bastions, entirely fiiced with stone.'

Isaac de Rasieres, the writer of the letter mentioned, arrived in the ship " Arms of Amsterdam " on July 27th, 1623. He was a HugU3not WaKoan,an agent of Blommaert an Am->terdam merchant, and a member of the West India Company, to whom his letter is addressed. He was made by Minuit Provincial Secretary, and as such, opened a correspondence with Gov. Bradford of Plymouth, for a friendly trade, visited that celebrated place, as a New Netherland envoy in 1627, and has left us an account of it in this letter, discovered at the Hague in 1846, and first printed in II. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2 Series, 339.

On the 23d of September, 1626. this shij), the " Arms of Amsterdam," sailed again on her return voyage to Holland, with a very vakiable cargo of furs.

s I. O'Call., 101 ; X. Xetliorlnuil Register, 2.

3 Wiisseiiner, III. Poc. Hist. N. Y., 47 ; Hrcxlhead's Early Colonization of N. Xetherlui.d, II. K. Y. Hist. Coll., 2d Scries, [i]). 3C3-3G5.