He goes back to Canada possessed of a new and valuable seigniory (having spent the proceeds of the first in his unsuccessful venture) under charge to garrison Fort Frontenac (on the north shore of Ontario) and to gather about it a French colony. For two years he labors there, bringing a hundred acres of sunlight into the forests, building ships for the navigation of the lake, and establishing a school under the direction of the friars. He might have stayed there and become rich "if he had preferred gain to glory"--there where he had both solitude and power. "Feudal lord of the forest around him, commander of a garrison raised and paid by himself, founder of the mission and patron of the church, he reigned the autocrat of his lonely little empire." But this does not satisfy him. It is but a step toward the greater empire still farther to the west. In 1677 he comes back again to Paris with a desire not for land, but for authority to explore and open up the western country, which he describes in a letter to Colbert. It is nearly all "so beautiful and fertile; so free from forests and so full of meadows, brooks and rivers; so abounding in fish, game, and venison that one can find there in plenty, and with little trouble, all that is needful for the support of powerful colonies. The soil will produce anything that is raised in France." [Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 122. Margry, 1:331.] He says that cattle may be left out all winter, calls attention to some hides he has brought with him of cattle whose wool is also valuable, and again expresses confidence that colonies would become prosperous, especially as they would be increased by the tractable Indians, who will readily adapt themselves to the French way of life, as soon as they taste the advantages of French friendship. He does not fail to mention the hostility of the Iroquois and the threatened rivalry of the English, who are beginning to covet that country--all of which only animates him the more to action. Lodged in Paris in an obscure street, Rue de la Truanderie, and attacked as a visionary or worse, he is yet petitioning Louis XIV for the government of a realm larger than the king's own, and holding conference with Colbert. In the early summer, after his winter of waiting somewhere in the vicinity in which I have written this chapter, a patent comes to him from the summer palace at St.-Germain-en-Laye, which must have been to him far more than his patent of nobility or title to any estate in France: