Note 288 — 1833-1836.

Was a superior mason, and trained before enlistment as an overseer. Most of his military service—nineteen years—was spent on the surveys of Great Britain and Ireland, in which he had made himself so proficient a surveyor and mathematician, that he was one of three non-commissioned officers sent to the royal observatory at Greenwich to receive instructions in the mode of making astronomical observations. This was with the view to his employment on the boundary survey in America, in which he afterwards served for a season with approbation. Colonel Estcourt wrote of him,—“He is intelligent, well educated, and efficient for almost any duty.” These acquirements, coupled with his good conduct, gained for him the vacant foremancy at Zante, in September, 1848; but, it must be added, he commenced the duty in dishonour by unwarrantably drawing a bill on the Assistant Adjutant-General of the royal engineers, and then having run a career of dissipation that nothing could check, was justly dismissed in disgrace in July, 1849.