115 
and skill were not to be found in this country to erect a 
. . ° ° 
similar structure where, as all admitted, one was so much 
ed 
He carefully studied the accounts of the construction of 
the Eddystone, Bell-rock, and Skerryvore lighthouses, by 
Smeaton, Robert Stevenson, and Allan Stevenson, but the 
fact that the Eddystone was begun at high-water mark, that 
the ledge of the Bell-rock was extensive and elevated sev- 
eral feet above low-water, and that the Skerryvore presented 
still less difficulties, while the surveys show that the outer 
Minot’s ledge was very contracted and that the proposed 
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 any- 
thing which had ever preceded it. é 
The plans which he prepared were drawn with his usual 
minuteness of detail. The problem was one peculiarly fas- 
_ Cinating 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 connection to those adjacent, that the whole shall be 
an integral, having a strength ample to defy the most pow- 
erful foe to human structure, the fury of the ocean’s winds 
and waves. Though not himself the constructor of the 
work, yet to have insisted against authoritative adverse 
i build- 
_ its completion, entitles him, even were this his only work, 
to recognition among the Smeatons and Stevensons and 
Brunells, as one of the great engineers of the age- 
For the execution, he selected Captain (now Brevet Brig- 
; ) Barton S. Alexander, of the Corps of Engi- 
* 
