newbie: emacs21 and cperl-mode

["Matthew.Pettis@gmail.com" <Matthew.Pettis@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I am doing this on Ubuntu-6.10... installed emacs21 via synaptic...

I tried switching to cperl-mode (M-x cperl-mode), and the status bar
(I think it's called) tells me I am in cperl mode, but there is no
syntax highlighting, and none of the automatic expansions work.
Actually, perl-mode does nothing as well...

I looked at http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CPerlMode#CPerlMode1,
and it tells me to add some lines to my ~/.emacs file (or ~./xemacs
or ./.xemacs/init.el), none of which exist for me.

Do I need to create these, or should they be there?  If I need to
create one, which one should I create?  Is this missing file probably
the cause of why nothing works?

Thanks,