BART

See also:

• SIR

SIR

See also:

• FRANCIS
• FRANCIS (FRarrcols) OF SALES, ST (1567-1622)
• FRANCIS (Lat. Franciscus, Ital. Francesco, Span. Francisco, Fr. Francois, Ger. Franz)
• FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP (174o-1818)

FRANCIS

See also:

• BOND
• BOND, SIR EDWARD AUGUSTUS (1815-1898)

BOND

See also:

• HEAD (in 0. Eng. heafad; the word is common to Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch hoofd, Ger. Haupt, generally taken to be in origin connected with Lat. caput, Gr. KerbOvi7)
• HEAD, SIR EDMUND WALKER, BART
• BART SIR FRANCIS BOND HEAD

HEAD  . (1793-1875), English soldier, traveller and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent, was born there on the 1st of January 1793 . He was educated at Rochester grammar school and the Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811 he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers . He was for some years stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815, being present at the battle of Waterloo . He went on half-pay in 1825, when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold and silver mines of Rio de La Plata . In connexion with this enterprise he made several rapid journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes, his Rough Notes of which, published in 1826, and written in a clear and spirited style, obtained for him the name of " Galloping Head." On his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with the directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he published Reports of the La Plata Mining Association (London, 1827) . He was soon afterwards restored to the active list of the army as a major unattached, mainly owing to his efforts to introduce the South American lasso into the British service for auxiliary draught . In 1830 he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834 Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man . In 1835 he was knighted, and in the following year created a baronet . In 1835 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection . Shortly afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the home government, he resigned his post and returned to England, via New York (see Quarterly Review, vols . 63-64) .

Thereafter he devoted himself to

writing, chiefly for the Quarterly Review, and to hunting . He rode to hounds until he was seventy-five . In 1869 Sir Francis Head was made a privy councillor . He died on the loth of July 1875, at Duppas Hall, Croydon . Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and displaying both acute observation and genial humour . His principal works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian administration (1839), were The Emigrant (1846); Highways and Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849); Stokers and Pokers, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); The Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850); A Faggot of French Sticks (1852); A Fortnight in Ireland (1852); Descriptive Essays (1856); comments on Kinglake's Crimean War (1853); The Horse and his Rider (1860) ; The Royal Engineer (187o); and a sketch of the life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872) . His brother, SIR GEORGE HEAD (1782-18J5), was educated at the Charterhouse . In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting account in " Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General " attached to the second volume of his Home Tour, published in 1837 . In 1814 he was sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia . Some of his Canadian experiences were narrated by him in Forest Scenery and Incidents in the Wilds of North America (1829) . In 1831 he was knighted . He published in 1835 A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled A Home Tour through various parts of the United Kingdom .

Both works are amusing and instructive, but his

Rome, a Tour of many Days, published in 1849, is somewhat dull and tedious . He also translated Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca (1850), and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (1851) .