470 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



it is easy enough to do without it when once it is gone. All their 

 plans and hopes burst like a bubble ! Infants by the score 

 dashed on the rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, no ! 

 If the St. John did not make her port here, she has been tele- 

 graphed there. The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is 

 a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any 

 Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it 

 succeeds. 





•--■^i.-.^J 



■^ 



From a drawing by John W. Bennett, keeper. 



The Old Iron Lighthouse on Minot Ledge, destroyed in the Gale 

 ON April i6, 1851. 



The second year after this disaster of the St. John came 

 a storm yet more furious upon a heaping full tide, and 

 Swift's iron lighthouse upon Minot Ledge was knocked 

 into bits. Some seamen have said that the iron frame 

 would have stood out the gale but for a platform which 

 the keeper had fastened into it as a sort of shelf for his 

 boat. This save an additional surface for the waves to 



