hout the
winter of 1813-14, was due principally to the unusual mildness of the
weather. This impeded movement in all quarters, by preventing the
formation of ice and of the usual hard snow surface, which made winter
the most favorable season for land transportation. Chauncey at
Sackett's Harbor chafed and fretted over the detention of the stores
and guns for his new ships then building, upon which he was reckoning
for control of the lake. "The roads are dreadful," he wrote on
February 24, "and if the present mild weather continues we shall
experience difficulty." A week later, "I have the mortification to
inform you that all our heavy guns are stopped at and below
Poughkeepsie in consequence of the badness of the roads, and that the
teamsters have abandoned them there." He has given up hopes of a
frost, and counts now only upon water communication; but the delay and
change of route were the cause of two smart affairs with which the
lake operations opened, for on March 29 he announces that the guns are
still below Albany, and now must come by way of Oswego and the
lake,[268] instead of securely inland by sleds. Yeo reported a like
delay on his side in the equipment of his new ships, owing to the
unusual scarcity of snow.

The same conditions imposed similar, if less decisive, limitations
upon the movements of bodies of men. The most important instance of
purpose frustrated was in an enterprise projected by Drummond against
Put-in Bay, where were still lying the "Detroit" and "Queen
Charlotte", the most powerful of the prizes taken by Perry the
previous September, the injuries to which had prevented their removal
to the safer position of Erie. On January 21 he communicated to
Governor-General Prevost the details of an expedition of seventeen
hundred and sixty men,[269] two hundred of them seamen, who were to
start from the Niagara frontier by land against Detroit, and from
there to cross on the ice to the Bass Islands, where it was hoped they
could seize and burn the vessels. The occupation of Fort Niagara, and
other dispositions made of his division on the peninsula, had so
narrowed his front of defence, and thereby strengthened it, as to
warrant this large detachment.

This project was one of several looking to regaining control of Lake
Erie, which during the remainder of the war occupied unceasingly the
attention of British officers. Although the particular destination was
successfully concealed, the general fact of