“A wild-looking set were the first white sailors of the lakes,” says Hubbard in his “Memorials of Half a Century.”  “Their weirdness was often enhanced by the dash of Indian blood, and they are better described as rangers of the woods and waters.  Picturesque, too, they were in their red flannel or leather shirts and cloth caps of some gay color, finished to a point which hung over on one side with a depending tassel.  They had a genuine love for their occupation, and muscles that never seemed to tire at the paddle and oar.  These were not the men who wanted steamboats and fast sailing vessels.  These men had a real love for canoeing, and from dawn to sunset, with only a short interval, and sometimes no midday rest, they would ply the oars, causing the canoe or barge to shoot through the water like a thing of life, but often contending against head winds and gaining little progress in a day’s rowing.”

[Illustration:  ONE OF THE FIRST LAKE SAILORS]

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”]