We looked to Capt.

Douglass, who was the topographer and a professor at West Point, to take the lead in the matter.

The death of Mr.Ellicott, Professor of Mathematics at that institution, who was his father-in-law, and his appointment to the vacant chair, from that of engineering, placed him in a very delicate and arduous situation.

He has never received credit for the noble manner in which he met this crisis.

He was not only almost immediately required to teach his class the differential calculus, but the French copy--a language with which he was not familiar--was the only one employed.