etc., they are almost uncounted. The board which directs this service was
organized in 1852. It consists of two officers of high rank in the navy,
two engineer officers of the army, and two civilians of high scientific
attainments. One officer of the army and one of the navy are detailed as
secretaries. The Secretary of the Treasury is _ex officio_ president of
the board. Each of the sixteen districts into which the country is
divided is inspected by an army and a navy officer, and a small navy of
lighthouse tenders perform the duty of carrying supplies and relief to the
lighthouses up and down our three coasts.

[Illustration: MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT]

The planning of a lighthouse to stand on a submerged reef, in a stormy
sea, is an engineering problem which requires extraordinary qualities of
technical skill and scientific daring for its solution, while to raise the
edifice, to seize the infrequent moments of low calm water for thrusting
in the steel anchors and laying the heavy granite substructure on which
shall rise the slender stone column that shall defy the assaults of wind
and wave, demands coolness, determination, and reckless courage. Many
lights have been built at such points on our coast, but the ponderous
tower of Minot's Ledge, at the entrance to Boston Harbor, may well be
taken as a type.

Minot's Ledge is three miles off the mouth of Boston Bay, a jagged reef of
granite, wholly submerged at high tide, and showing a scant hundred yards
of rock above the water at the tide's lowest stage. It lies directly in
the pathway of ships bound into Boston, and over it, on even calm days,
the breakers crash in an incessant chorus. Two lighthouses have reared
their heads here to warn away the mariner. The first was completed in
1848, an octagonal tower, set on wrought-iron piles extending five feet
into the rock. The skeleton structure was expected to offer little surface
to the shock of the waves, and the wrought iron of which it was built
surely seemed tough enough to resist any combined force of wind and water;
but in an April gale in 1851 all was washed away, and two brave keepers,
who kept the lamp burning until the tower fell, went with it. Late at
night, the watchers on the shore at Cohasset, three miles away, heard the
tolling of the lighthouse bell, and through the flying scud caught
occasional glimpses of the light; but morning showed nothing left of the
structure except twisted stumps of iron piles, bent and