That was the vision with which he started northward from the mouth of the great river, the vision out of which he might at once have been starved except for the meat of alligators shot along the way. Seized of a dangerous illness, he sent Tonty on to Mackinaw to forward news of the discovery to Canada, and unable, even after months of Father Membré's care, to go to Paris to prepare for the carrying out of his great scheme, he, joined by Tonty, climbs the Rock St. Louis and lays out ramparts on its crest, of which I thought I discovered traces many years ago. It was another Rock of Quebec, rising sheer a hundred and twenty-five feet above the river in the midst of the prairie. About it gathered under his protection many tribes of Indians, in common dread of the Iroquois, in common hope, doubtless, of gain from commerce with the French. La Salle, in a report to be found in the archives of the Marine in Paris, states that his extemporized colony numbered four thousand warriors, or twenty thousand souls. [Footnote: Margry, 2:363. Parkman, "La Salle," pp. 317, 318.] It had come up as Jonah's gourd and might as quickly wither, as the village of the Illinois but a few years previous had withered into desolation in a few hours before the hot breath of the terrorizing fame of the Iroquois. From his seigniorial aerie he sent messages to the governor of Canada, no longer the friendly Frontenac but a Pharaoh who knew not this Joseph, praying for cooperation, saying that he could not leave his red allies lest, if the Iroquois should strike in his absence, they would think him in league with their dread enemies; asking that his men who go down with hides in exchange for munitions be not retained as outlaws; urging that it is for the advantage of his creditors (for his losses had amounted to forty thousand crowns) that they do not seize his goods-since the means of meeting all his debts would then be destroyed-and begging for more men with whom to make this colony permanent and gather the more remote Indian tribes around the sheltering Rock St. Louis. [Footnote: Margry, 2:314. Parkman, "La Salle," pp. 320-324.] But it was not such prayers that reached Louis XIV, who, on May 10, 1682, before La Salle's report of the discovery of the Mississippi arrived at Versailles, had directed that no further permission should be given to make journeys of discovery toward the Mississippi, as the colonists might better be employed in cultivating the lands.