thing better to do than to command a fleet of gunboats at
Newport, Rhode Island.

Perry became very tired of this. He wanted to be where fighting was
going on, and he kept worrying the Navy Department for some active work.
So at last he was ordered to go to the lakes, with the best men he had,
and get ready to fight the British there. Perry received the order on
February 17, 1813, and before night he and fifty of his men were on
their way west in sleighs; for the ground was covered deep with snow.

The sleighing was good, but the roads were bad and long; and it took him
and his men two weeks to reach Sackett's Harbor, at the north end of
Lake Ontario. From that place he went to Presque Isle, on Lake Erie,
where the fine City of Erie now stands. Then only the seed of a city was
planted there, in a small village, and the forest came down to the lake.

Captain Perry did not go to sleep when he got to the water-side. He was
not one of the sleepy sort. He wanted vessels and he wanted them
quickly. The British had warships on the lake, and Perry did not intend
to let them have it all to themselves.

When he got to Erie he found Captain Dobbins, an old shipbuilder, hard
at work. In the woods around were splendid trees, white and black oak
and chestnut, for planking, and pine for the decks. The axe was busy at
these giants of the forest; and so fast did the men work, that a tree
which was waving in the forest when the sun rose might be cut down and
hewn into ship-timber before the sun set. In that way Perry's fleet grew
like magic out of the forest. While the ships were building, cannon and
stores were brought from Pittsburgh by way of the Allegheny River and
its branches. And Perry went to Niagara River, where he helped capture a
fine brig, called the _Caledonia_, from the British.

Captain Dobbins built two more brigs, one of which Perry named the
_Niagara_. The other he called _Lawrence_, after Captain Lawrence, the
story of whose life and death you have just read.

Have any of you ever heard the story of the man who built a wagon in his
barn and then found it too wide to go out through the door? Perry was in
the same trouble. His new ships were too big to get out into the lake.
There was a bar at the mouth of the river with only four feet of water
on it. That was not deep enough to float his new vessels. And he was in
a hurry to get these in deep water; for he knew the British fleet would
soon be down to try to destroy