merican sailors on a lake ship bigger than a bateau,
was "Uncle Dacy" Johnson, of Cleveland, who sailed for fifty years,
beginning about 1850. "When I was a chunk of a boy," says the old Captain
in a letter to a New York paper, "I put a thirty-two pound bundle on my
back and started on foot to Buffalo. I made the journey to Albany, N.Y.,
from Bridgeport, Conn., in sixteen days, which was nothing remarkable, as
I had $3 in money, and a bundle of food. Many a poor fellow I knew started
on the same journey with nothing but an axe. When I arrived at Buffalo I
found a very small town--Cleveland, Sandusky, and Erie, were all larger.
There were only two lighthouses on the lakes, one at Buffalo, which was
the first one built, and the other one at Erie. Buffalo was then called
Fort Erie, and was a struggling little town. My first trip as a sailor was
made from Buffalo to Erie, which was then considered quite a voyage. From
Buffalo to Detroit was looked upon as a long voyage, and a vessel of
thirty-two tons was the largest ship on the lakes. In 1813 I was one of a
crew of four who left Buffalo on the sloop 'Commencement' with a cargo of
whisky for Erie. While beating along shore the English frigate 'Charlotte'
captured us and two boatloads of red-coats boarded our vessel and took us
prisoners. We were paroled on shipboard the same day, and before night
concocted a scheme to get the Englishmen drunk on our whisky. One of our
fellows got drunk first, and told of our intentions, the plot was
frustrated, and we narrowly escaped being hung."

[Illustration: "TWO BOAT-LOADS OF REDCOATS BOARDED US AND TOOK US
PRISONERS"]

Once begun, the conquest of the lakes as a highway for trade was rapid. We
who live in the days of railroads can hardly appreciate how tremendous was
the impetus given to the upbuilding of a region if it possessed
practicable waterways. The whole history of the settlement of the Middle
West is told in the story of its rivers and lakes. The tide of
immigration, avoiding the dense forests haunted by Indians, the rugged
mountains, and the broad prairies into which the wheel of the heavy-laden
wagon cut deep, followed the course of the Potomac and the Ohio, the
Hudson, Mohawk, and the Great Lakes. Streams that have long since ceased
to be thought navigable for a boy's canoe were made to carry the settlers'
few household goods heaped on a flatboat. The flood of families going West
created a demand that soon covered the lake