Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/425

 Alps. Still, if in colour and in other matters his work sometimes exhibited originality at the expense both of beauty and of traditional usage, it must at all events be acknowledged as invariably sincere, substantial, and fearlessly true.

Butterfield died, unmarried, on 23 Feb. 1900 at his residence, 42 Bedford Square. He was buried at Tottenham cemetery. He had been a constant attendant at the church of All Hallows, Tottenham, which he had practically rebuilt.

 BY, JOHN (1781–1836), lieutenant-colonel royal engineers, founder of Bytown, now Ottawa, Canada, and engineer of the Rideau canal, was born in 1781. After passing through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, hereceived a commission as second lieutenant in the royal artillery on 1 Aug. 1799, but was transferred to the royal engineers on 20 Dec. following. His further commissions were dated: lieutenant 18 April 1801, second captain 2 March 1805, first captain 24 June 1809, brevet major 23 June 1814, lieutenant-colonel 2 Dec. 1824, After serving at Woolwich and Plymouth he went in August 1802 to Canada, where he remained for nearly nine years. He constructed a fine model, now at Chatham, of the fortress of Quebec, including the confluence of the rivers St. Charles and St. Lawrence, and the site of the battle won by Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, In January 1811 he went to Portugal and served in the peninsular war, taking part in the first and second sieges of Badajos in May and June of that year.

By was recalled from the peninsula to take charge of the works at the royal gun-powder mills at Faversham, Purfleet, and Waltham Abbey, a post he occupied with great credit from January 1812 until August 1821, when, owing to reductions made in the establishments of the army, he was placed on the unemployed list. While employed in the powder mills he designed a bridge on the truss principle for a span of one thousand feet, and constructed a model of it which is in the possession of the royal engineers at Chatham, A description of the bridge appeared in the 'Morning Chronicle' of 14 Feb. 1816.

In April 1826 By went to Canada, having w been selected to design and carry out a military water communication, free of obstruction and safe from attack by the United States, between the tidal waters of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes of Canada, 'If ever man deserved to be immortalised in this utilitarian age,' says Sir Richard Bonnycastle in 'The Canadas in 1841,' 'it was Colonel John By,' In an unexplored part of the country, where the only mode of progress was the frail Indian canoe, with a department to be organised, workmen to be instructed, and many difficulties to be overcome, he constructed a remarkable work — the Rideau canal. On his arrival in Canada he surveyed the inland route up the Ottawa river to the Rideau affluent, and thence by the Rideau lake and Catariqui river to Kingston on Lake Ontario. He chose for his headquarters a position near the mouth of the proposed canal, a little below the beautiful Chaudiere falls of the Ottawa river, whence the canal was to ascend eighty-two feet by a succession of eight locks through a chasm. Here he built himself a house in the bush, there being at that time only two or three log huts at Nepean point. A town soon sprang up, and was named after him Bytown.

In May 1827, the survey plans and estimates having been approved by the home government, by whom the cost was to be defrayed, By was directed to push forward the work as rapidly as possible, without waiting for the usual annual appropriations of money. Two companies of sappers and miners were placed at his disposal, a regular staff" for the works organised, barracks and a hospital were commenced to be built in stone, and the foundation stone of the canal works was laid by Sir John Franklin. The canal was opened in the spring of 1832, when the steamer Pumper passed through from Bytown to Kingston. The length of the navigation is 126¼ miles, with forty-seven locks and a total lockage of 446¼ feet. The work proved to be much more expensive than had been anticipated; for although stone, sand, and puddling clay were near at hand, the excavations had to be made in a soil full of springs interspersed with masses of erratic rock. In 1828 the attention of the British parliament was called to the expenditure, By having recommended that additional money should be granted to increase the sifee of the locks and build them in stone instead of wood. Colonels Edward Fanshawe and Griffith George Lewis [q. v.], of the royal engineers, were sent as commissioners from England to report on the subject, and adopted By's views. Kingsford, in his 'History of Canada,' says, 'We should never forget the debt we owe to Colonel By for the stand he made on this occasion.' 