166 EULOGY ON THE LATE GENERAL JOSEPH G. TOTTEN. 



The question of location being thus widely reopened, a committee of the 

 board was sent to make a personal examination of the locality. General Tot- 

 ten was, of course, a member of this committee, and was not long in making up 

 Lis mind that the outer and not the inner Minot was the proper site. His argu- 

 ments on this subject proved conclusive with the board. He urged that if the 

 light were placed on any of the inner rocks the desired object would be but 

 partially accomplished, since in a dense fog or thick snow-storm vessels might 

 approach within a few hundred feet without being able to see it, and thus be 

 lost upon the outer ledge. 



When the question of practicability was broached, his professional pride 

 seemed to be roused. He argued that, after what had been done on the coast of 

 England in the erection of the Eddystone light-house a century ago, and more 

 recently of the Bell Rock and Skerryvore lights, it would be a humiliating 

 admission that the requisite science and skill were not to be found in this 

 country to erect .a similar structure where, as all admitted, one was so much 

 needed. 



He carefully studied the accounts of the construction of the Eddystone, Bell 

 Rock, and Skerryvore light-houses, by Smeaton, Robert Stephenson, and Allan 

 Stephenson, but the fact that the Eddystone was begun at high-water mark, 

 that the ledge of the Bell Rock was extensive, and elevated several feet above 

 low-water, and that the Skerryvore presented still less difficulties, while the sur- 

 veys show that the outer Minot's ledge M\as very contracted, and that the pro- 

 posed structure must commence even below low water, did not deter him from 

 advocating and designing a work for this formidable position more difficult to 

 accomplish than anything which had ever preceded it. 



The plans which he prepared were drawn with his usual minuteness of detail. 

 The problem was one peculiarly fascinating to engineers — the uniting into a 

 single mass the several component stones of the structure so that no one can be 

 detached from the rest, that each shall be a bond of connexion to those adjacent, 

 that the whole shall be an integral, having a strength ample to defy the most 

 powerful foe to human structure, the fury of the ocean's Avinds and waves. 

 Though not himself the constructor of the work, yet to have insisted against 

 authoritative adverse opinion on its practicability, to have planned the building 

 and selected the engineer who should rear it, and to Lave overlooked the work 

 from its commencement to its completion, entitles him, even were this his only 

 work, to recognition among the Smeatons and Stephensons and Brunels, as one 

 of the great engineers of the age. 



Eor the execution, he selected Captain (now Brevet Brigadier General) Bar- 

 ton S. Alexander, of the Corps of Engineers, an officer Avhose experience, ener- 

 gy, boldness, and self-reliance eminently litted him for the task. It is for him 

 to recount the history of the work, to give to the world the interesting narrative 

 of difficulties met and overcome, of patience requited and energy triumphant. 

 General Totten watched its progress with unflagging interest, making frequent 

 visits to the superintending engineer, aiding him with his counsels and encour- 

 aging him in his difficulties. He lived to enjoy the proud satisfaction of inspect- 

 ing the finished structure ; and when at last from its towering summit flashed 

 o'er the troubled waters the beacon-light of safety to the tempest-tossed mari- 

 ner, he might well exclaim, with the Latin poet, though in a nobler sense and 

 in a less boastful spirit, " Exegi monumentum tere perenius." 



General (then Colonel) Totten was named in the act of Congress organizing 

 the Smithsonian Institution in 1846 as one of the Regents to whom the busi- 

 ness transactions of that celebrated establishment are intrusted. At an early 

 meeting of the Board of' Regents he was appointed one of the Executive Com- 

 mittee, and was continued in these offices by repeated election to the time of 

 his death, a period of nearly eighteen years. Be evinced a lively interest in 

 the organization of the Institution, and after a careful study of the will and char- 



