for he also married an English wife, and thenceforth assumed her name instead of conferring his foreign patronymic upon her. This lady was Anna Gabriella Head, second daughter and co-heiress of a clerical baronet, the Reverend Francis Head, of the Hermitage, near the quaint old city of Rochester, in the county of Kent. Upon his marriage, Moses Mendez became Moses Head. To him succeeded his eldest son, James Roper Head, who married Miss Frances Anne Burges, daughter of Mr. George Burges, of Bath, and grand-daughter maternally of James, thirteenth Lord Summerville, in the peerage of Scotland. By this lady James Roper Head had five sons, the fourth of whom, christened Francis Bond, is the subject of this memoir.
He was born on the 1st January, 1793, at the Hermitage, where his early years were passed. He was educated at the Military Academy at Woolwich, and obtained his first commission in the Royal Engineers in 1811. He saw some active service in Spain, and was present at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. In June, 1816, he married Miss Julia Valenza Somerville (daughter of the Hon. Hugh Somerville), who still lives in the memory of a few of the oldest inhabitants of Toronto. In 1825 he was a Captain in the Corps of Engineers, on duty at Edinburgh, and while there it was proposed to him to go out to South America in charge of an association then lately formed for the working of some gold and silver mines in the provinces of Rio de la Plata. It was the first year in which such speculations were rife, and it was probably with high hopes and expectations that he set sail with his party from Falmouth. Arriving in due course of time at Buenos Ayres, accompanied by a surveyor, an assayer, and several miners from Cornwall, he lost no time in procuring the necessary means of conveyance, and pushed on to the gold mines of San Luis, and thence to the silver mines of Upsallata, beyond Mendoza, about one thousand miles from Buenos Ayres. Leaving his party at Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes, he returned on horseback across the Pampas to Buenos Ayres by himself, performing the distance in eight days. Letters which he found awaiting him at Buenos Ayres made it necessary that he should go immediately to Chili. He accordingly again crossed the Pampas, and gathering his party at Mendoza, led them across the Andes to Santiago, whence they proceeded in various directions to "prospect" the country and inspect the mines, travelling above one thousand two hundred miles. When he had concluded his report on the several mines of which he was in quest, the party re-crossed the Andes
