ize him to employ a
number of engineers. It was not, however, until 1777 that a number of
engineer officers from the French army arrived in this country, and
were appointed in the Continental army. General DuPortail was made
Chief Engineer, and Colonel Kosciusko, the great Polish patriot, was
among his assistants. Other officers of the Continental army were
employed on engineering duty; and under their supervision such works
as the forts and the great chain barrier at West Point were built, and
the siege operations around Boston and Yorktown were carried on.

After the close of the war, in 1794, a Corps of "Artillerists and
Engineers" was organized. This corps was stationed at West Point, and
became the nucleus of the United States Military Academy. In 1802, by
operation of the law reorganizing the army, this corps was divided, as
the names would indicate, into an Artillery Corps and Corps of
Engineers. The Corps of Engineers consisted of one major, two
captains, four lieutenants, and ten cadets. The Artillery Corps was
again divided into the Ordnance Corps and several regiments of
artillery, now five in number, while the duties of the Corps of
Engineers were divided between the Engineer Corps and a Corps of
Topographical Engineers, organized at a later date; but on the
breaking out of the late rebellion it was deemed best to unite the two
corps, and they have so remained until the present time. The Corps of
Engineers now consists of 118 officers of various grades, from second
lieutenant to brigadier general, of which last grade there is only one
officer, the chief of the corps, and it requires something more than
an average official lifetime for the aforesaid lieutenant to attain
that rank. Hardly one in ten of them ever reach it. Daniel Webster's
remark to the young lawyer, that "there is always room at the top,"
will not apply to the Corps of Engineers. The officers are all
graduates of the Military Academy, which institution continued as a
part of the Corps of Engineers until 1866. The vacancies in the corps
are filled by the assignment to it of from two to six graduates each
year, and there is attached to the corps a battalion of four companies
of enlisted men, formerly called Sappers and Miners, but now known as
the Battalion of Engineers.

We now come naturally to the duties of our military engineer, and here
I may remark that these duties are so varied and so numerous that a
detailed recital of them would sugg