CHARLES OTIS BOUTELLE. 353 



this city, he was elected a menibor of the Philosophical Society 

 of Washington. 



No notice of Mr. Boutelle's life would be complete that should 

 omit reference to the important services which he rendered to his 

 country at a critical period of its history. In common with the 

 great majority of his brother officers assigned to duty with the 

 military and naval forces, he participated in the hardships and 

 dangers of the civil war. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities 

 he was assigned to the command of the steamer Vixen and schooner 

 Arago, as hydrographic officer of the South Atlantic Squadron, 

 serving under Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, and Commodore 

 Lanman, U. S. N. This duty lasted throughout the, war, and it 

 devolved upon him the responsibility for the safetj'' of naviga- 

 tion of the squadron along its entire cruising ground. With 

 what patriotic devotion and professional ability this service was 

 rendered, the records of the civil war amply attest. 



Admiral Dupont, in his report to the Navy Department of the 

 capture of Port Royal, refers to the fact that all aids to navigation 

 had been removed by order of the Confederate authorities, and ac- 

 knowledges the able assistance of Captain Boutelle in sounding 

 out and buoying the channel, and thus enabling the squadron to 

 advance to the attack. 



General W. T. Sherman, U. S. Army, commanding the land 

 expeditionary force, concludes a report, dated November 8, 1861, 

 as follows: ''It is my duty to report the valuable services of Mr, 

 Boutelle, assistant in the Coast Survey. . . . His services are in- 

 valuable to the army as well as to the navy, and I earnestly recom- 

 mend that important notice be taken of this very able and scientific 

 officer by the War Department." 



Personally, Captain Boutelle (as he was known to his friends 

 after the civil war) was a man of varied reading and a most reten- 

 tive memory, genial and witty in conversation, of uniform kindness 

 of heart, and of a generous and hospitable nature, always assuming 

 that others were guided by motives as unselfish as his own. 



He combated manfully the advances of age and the inroads of 

 disease, and it was not until the approach of his seventy-eighth 

 year that, yielding to the solicitations of his family and friends, he 

 sought relief from active duty. He died on the 22d of June, 1890, 

 at the home of his son. Dr. Boutelle, in Hampton, Virginia. 



VOL. XXVI. (n. 8. xviii.) 23 



