The cost of these campaigns had been enormous to both belligerents. The Americans had spent about two and a half million dollars in building vessels on lakes Erie, Ontario, and Champlain; which was a large sum for that day, and yet was small in comparison with the incidental cost of maintaining considerable bodies of troops in idleness through a whole summer while waiting for the fleets to be built. It was estimated that the conveyance of each cannon to Sackett's Harbor had cost a thousand dollars. The flour for Harrison's army, by the time it reached the troops, had cost a hundred dollars a barrel. There were long distances through the wilderness of Western New York and Northern Ohio where supplies could only be carried on packhorses, half a barrel to a horse, and other horses had to follow with forage for those that were carrying the supplies. Most of the horses were used up by a single trip. Of four thousand used in carrying provisions {161}to Harrison, but eight hundred were alive the next spring. In Canada the hardships of war rested heavily upon the people as well as the soldiers. All their salt had come from the United States, and what little there was on that side of the border when communication with this country ceased was held at a dollar a quart. At Kingston flour was thirty dollars a barrel. So scarce were provisions of all kinds, that the Government appointed commissioners to determine how much food each family should be permitted to consume. In the British camps, lean cattle were killed to prevent their starving to death, and then the meat was eaten by the soldiers. In later wars we have often succeeded in shooting more men, but seldom in producing more misery.