His canoes could not face the open sea, so the explorers retraced their course up stream. They suffered from want of food, the natives attacked them, and La Salle himself was sorely stricken by fever, which kept him many weeks at Fort Prudhomme. It was not till September that he reached Michillimackinac, and rejoined Tonty, who had gone on before him. The winter of 1682-3 was spent in establishing a colony of French and Indians on the Illinois. The place selected for the purpose was on the southern bank of the river, some distance above the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, where a high precipitous cliff towered over wood and stream. The rock had been marked by La Salle in his former sojourn on {163} the river, and it was during Tonty's visit to the spot[9] that Fort Crèvecoeur was looted and left. Had the Illinois river been the Rhine, the rock would in mediaeval times have been crowned by the castle of a border noble; and on its summit was now built a wooden fort, Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Round the fort the Indians gathered for protection and for trade, the peasantry as it were of the western wilderness, clustering under the shelter of a feudal stronghold; for in virtue of the royal patent, La Salle was the Seignior of the place. It promised to be a strong outpost of French dominion, if its connexion with Canada was kept intact. [Footnote 9: See above, p. 160. A full description of the rock, known afterwards as 'Starved Rock,' is given in Parkman's _La Salle_ (12th ed.), pp. 293-4, and note.] [Sidenote: _Opposition to La Salle in Canada._] [Sidenote: _He returns to France._] New France was made by a few individual men, of whom La Salle was one. Their work was perpetually undone by want of efficient co-operation, or rather by efficient antagonism, on the part of their fellow countrymen. Fort Frontenac, Niagara, armed and trading vessels on the upper lakes, Fort Miami, where the lakes end, a fort on the Illinois--constituted the basis of a scheme worthy of support, but support was wanting. Frontenac had been recalled in 1682; and his successor, La Barre, leagued with the enemies of La Salle, cut off his supplies, detained his men, maligned him to the King, seized his Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, and sent an officer to take possession of the fort on the Illinois. La Salle had but one remedy left, to appeal to the King in person; and with that object he sailed for France in 1683, never to see Canada again. His troubled fighting life was soon to end, and its closing scenes were crowded with disaster. He seems to some extent to have lost his balance, to have acted with insufficient knowledge, and to have changed hardihood into recklessness. Yet in all that he attempted there was continuity of aim from first to last, and his final wild adventure, as it seemed to be, had its bearing on the story of the Canadian Dominion.