"Neither the fury of battle, the anguish of a mortal wound, nor the horrors of approaching death could subdue his gallant spirit. His dying words were 'Don't give up the ship!'" CHAPTER XVI COMMODORE PERRY WHIPS THE BRITISH ON LAKE ERIE "WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND THEY ARE OURS" IN the year 1813, when war was going on between England and the United States, the whole northern part of this country was a vast forest. An ocean of trees stretched away from the seaside in Maine for a thousand miles to the west, and ended in the broad prairies of the Mississippi region. The chief inhabitants of this grand forest were the moose and the deer, the wolf and the panther, the wild turkey and the partridge, the red Indian and the white hunter and trapper. It was a very different country from what we see to-day, for now its trees are replaced by busy towns and fertile fields. But in one way there has been no change. North of the forest lands spread the Great Lakes, the splendid inland seas of our northern border; and these were then what they are now, vast plains of water where all the ships of all the nations might sail. Along the shores of these mighty lakes fighting was going on; at Detroit on the west; at Niagara on the east. Soon war-vessels began to be built and set afloat on the waters of the lakes. And these vessels after a time came together in fierce conflict. I have now to tell the story of a famous battle between these lake men-of-war. There was then in our navy a young man named Oliver Hazard Perry. He was full of the spirit of fight, but, while others were winning victories on the high seas, he was given nothing 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.