Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/652

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JESSE.

635

the three following years was professionally engaged at yarious frontier stations, making roads, building bridges, and establishing military posts. In 1845, having been appointed Acting Adjutant to the Boyal Engineers, he acoom- panied the Chief Engineer over the whole frontier of the Cape Colony and the settlement of Natal, and in the early part of 1846 he was Major of Brigade to the garrison of Cape Town, until the arrival of Sir H. Pottinger as Governor, and Sir G. Berkeley as Commander-in-Chief, with whom he proceeded to the frontier against the Kaffirs. During the Kaffir war he made a military survey and map of Kafitraria, a work of great difficulty, ably exe- cuted. From 1848 till 1852 he commanded a company of Sappers at Woolwich and Chatham ; in the latter year was ordered to the island of Aldemey, for the puri)ose of designing plans for the fortifica- tions, and the superintendence of their execution, and in 1854 was promoted to tiie rank of major. In 1855 Major Jervois was trans- ferred to the London district, as Commanding Boyal Engineer, and was nominated by Lora Fanmure a member of a Committee on Barrack Accommodation, whose labours con- tributed much to the improvements which have of late years been effected in the construction of barracks, as well as in the sanitary condition of our troops. In 1856 he was appointed to the post of Assistant Inspector-GJeneral of Por- tifications,unaer Sir John Burgoyne, and on the appointment of a Boyal Commission to report upon the defences of tiie country, he was selected by the (Jovemment to be Secretary. He was a member of the Special Committee on the Application of Iron to Ships and Fortifications. In 1861 he attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, in 1862 was appointed Deputy Direc- tor of Fortifications under Sir John Burgoyne, and in 1863 was no-

minated a Companion of the Bath, and was sent on a special mission to report on the defences of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, on which occasion he visited the fortifications at the principal ports on the seaboard of the United States. In 1864 he was sent again on a special mission to Canada to confer with the Canadian Qovem- menton the question of the defence of that province. On his return to England his report was laid before Parliament, and the Im- perial Government undertook to carry out the defences of Quebec on the plan recommended by him. In addition to his post at the War Office, Colonel Jervois was Secre- tary to the Permanent Defence Committee, under the presidency of the Duke of Cambridge. He was created a Knight Commander of the Order of SS. Michael and George in 1874, and was appointed €K>vemorof the Straits Settlements, April 7, 1875. The latter post he held till June, 1877> when he was appointed Governor df South Austra- lia. He was nominated a G.C.M.G. in 1878 ; and in Dec. 1882 he was appointed Governor of New Zealand. JESSE, Gbobob Biohabd, son of the late Bev. William Jesse, Vicar of Margaretting, Essex, and Pelsall, Staffordshire, and nephew of the late Edward Jesse, of the Woods and Forests Office, author of " Gleanings in Natural His- tory,*' was born at Caen, in Nor- mandy, in 1820. He is a civil engineer, an etcher on copper, and the author of " Besearches into the History of the British Dog, 2 vols., 1866. He has been engaged in the construction of railways in England, Egypt, and India. He has written on the Suez Canal, the projected Euphrates Valley Bail- way, and Indian Public Works. He has also frequently contributed to the newspaper press in advocacy of the claims of the animal king- dom to justice and mercy at the hands of the human race. In Feb.,