One of the earliest American 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 lakes with schooners and brigs. Landed on the lake shore near some little stream, the immigrants would build flatboats, and painfully pole their way into the interior to some spot that took their fancy. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois thus filled up, towns growing by the side of streams now used only to turn mill-wheels, but which in their day determined where the prosperous settlement should be.