onorable employment is
profitless to a man of genius. He will in some way turn it to
account. Constructing gunboats, and recruiting men in port, were
services not calculated to make any great blaze in a despatch, but
they conducted Perry to his glorious bulletins of victory, and the
resounding praises of the nation.

He saw the new field of military operations opening on the lakes, and
his experienced eye must have seen as well the certain difficulties,
as the possible honors of the situation. It was not the post which an
officer with the claims of Perry would have sought, while brilliant
victories were being won, in the eye of the world, on the vast theatre
of the ocean. Others, however, were before him on that element.

Despairing of a command at sea, he offered himself to Commodore
Chauncey, who had recently been placed at the head of the lake
service. His character was understood by this officer, and the proffer
accepted. The necessary communications were made to the Government,
and in the middle of February, in 1813, he was ordered to join
Chauncey at Sackett's Harbor, with the picked men of his Newport
flotilla. He lost no time in reporting himself at the appointed spot.
His destination was Lake Erie, where he was to supervise the
construction of two vessels to be employed in the next campaign, and
he was anxious to get to the work; but Chauncey, who felt the need of
his aid, detained him for a while on Lake Ontario. He, however, toward
the end of March, reached Erie, where the vessels were building.

His experience in constructing gunboats at Newport was now of avail to
him. He put the defence of the works, which had been greatly
neglected, in a state of efficiency, and set himself to the collection
of supplies, workmen, and an armament: no easy matter at that day and
in that place in the wilderness; for such, as compared with our own
time, it then was. The labors of Perry in this work of preparation
were, in fact, of the most arduous character. They should not be
forgotten as a heavy item to his credit in the sum total of his
victory. Three gunboats and two brigs were launched and equipped in
May.

It was at this time that he received advices that Chauncey was about
to make an attack on the British post of Fort George, at the mouth of
the Niagara River. He had been promised a share in this adventure, and
hastened to the scene. The incidents of this journey show the spirit
of the man. In his own words, in a