38 general, in his dilemma, consulted one of the most distinguished officers in the army, and as great a military genius probably as the world has produced, — young Col. M‘Cree, of the engineers. On our arrival at Fort Erie, we found him in Gen. Brown’s staff; and he had really been the principal staff on which Brown had leaned to gain his brilliant success on the Niagara frontier. Gen. Izard was desirous of reaping the same advantage from M‘Cree, who advised to a very ingenious and scientific expedient to extricate the general from his embarrassment. It was to construct a floating bridge at some distance above the enemy, on our side of the Chippewa, with one end fastened on our side, while the rest of the bridge was to be floated off into the river ; and the other end, when the current had carried it to the opposite shore, to be attached there, for our army to pass over. But Gen. Brown, once relieved by Izard from Drummond’s superior force, seemed not at all disposed to assist him to gain any laurels in return. There was a marked jealousy and coldness between those officers, that precluded any joint enterprise of theirs from succeeding. Brig.-Gen. Totten, now head of the engineer department, was a young engineer in Gen. Izard’s staff, and gained his first laurels at Plattsburgh. The forts he built there would have done him honor, even had he then gained his present high advancement. With the most unmanageable material, the sand of Plattsburgh, he contrived, with the aid of carpentry, to construct his forts with a skill, science, and ingenuity that would have rendered them impregnable, Gen. Izard declared, against the overwhelming force of Prevost, even if it had not been crippled by the naval victory of the gallant Com. M‘Donough. When we left Plattsburgh for Fort Erie, Totten remained behind to test and fight his own works, which he did with great eclat. Winstanley, the gallant civil engineer, who bravely dared to prove his own light-house against as fierce an elemental strife as ever raged, fell a noble sacrifice to an inscrutable decree of Providence; but Totten, more fortunate, found his works were not to be subdued by man. Page 30. The author thinks we are mistaken as to the number of cannon belonging to the corps of artillery at Cambridge. Our informants, in 1818, were Col. Popkin and Capt. Trevett, captains in the
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