To statesmanship no shadow of pretence could be made on behalf of Sir Francis Head. The texture of his mind was light and airy. He was inordinately vain and self-conscious; and, as has been seen, he was devoid of political knowledge and experience. The whole course of his previous life had been of a character to render him unfit for such greatness as was now thrust upon him. A considerable part of it had been spent in travel and adventure, and very little of it in study. He had left school at an early age, since which time he had encountered innumerable moving accidents by flood and field in various parts of the world. He had received a certain amount of training at the Military Academy at Woolwich, and had obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers in his nineteenth year. He had seen some active service in Spain towards the close of the Peninsular War; had been present at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and had fought at Fleurus under the Prussian General Ziethan, where he had had his horse shot under him. After the restoration of peace he had for some time been engaged in making a trigonometrical survey of the island of Lampedoza, in the Mediterranean. Thence he had embarked in a Greek vessel for Tripoli; had been nearly wrecked through the skipper's intemperance, and had finally been put ashore at Malta. He had also been Byron-smitten, and had followed in the wake of the author of "Childe Harold" to the Levant; had contemplated "the Niobe of nations" among the ruins of Rome; had witnessed the dance of the dervishes amid the fallen temples of Athens; and had "felt his patriotism gain force upon the plain of Marathon."[202] He had twice visited South America as the agent of a company formed for the working of certain gold and silver mines, and known as the Rio de la Plata Mining Association. During one of these expeditions he had ridden on horseback from the port of Buenos Aires across the pampas to the silver mines of Upsallata, near the foot of the Andes, whence, without any companion whatever, he had galloped back to Buenos Aires--a distance of nearly a thousand miles--in the brief space of eight days. Then he had retraced his course across the pampas, and, collecting a party of miners at Mendoza, had conducted them over the Andes to Santiago, the capital of Chili. After "prospecting" the country in various directions, he had ridden back across the Andes and the pampas to Buenos Aires, having traversed six thousand miles on horseback in an inconceivably short time. His "Rough Notes" contains a graphic account of this expedition, and is very interesting reading. It won for him wide notoriety, and led to his being commonly referred to in the current literature of the time as "Galloping Head." His adventurous career had left an indelible stamp upon his character. He was rash, impetuous, inconsiderate and superficial, fond of producing dramatic effects, and ever with an eye to some _coup de theatre_. He had not been a Poor-Law Commissioner long