The preface to a book is very often nothing more than a respectable cloak, allowed by the conventionalities of literature, in which an author may wrap his excuses and apologies for troubling the public with his lucubrations. This dressing up of excuses in order to introduce them into notice under another name, is a thing so tempting to poor human nature, such a pleasant little offering to self esteem and vanity, that it would be very hard if authors were to be debarred from a luxury in which all their fellow mortals indulge. Yet, if it be true that a good wine needs no bush, it is equally true that a good book needs no excuse; and in this age of ready writers, it is very certain that no excuse or apology can justify the publishing a bad one. To apologise for poor or careless writing, because there has not been time or opportunity to make it better, provokes the question, “What necessity was there for writing at all?”—a question not always easily answered.

But this is not an apology for my own book; it is simply a preface to the narrative of another person, in which I can claim no part except that of collecting the facts from different sources, of arranging and compiling them. If in performing this task, I have in any way “come tardy off,” my excuses are due to both captain Brown and his readers.

In writing out this account, I have labored under the disadvantage of being able to hold no communication with captain Brown, except by letters. His legal papers connected with his claim for salvage, and his own concise narrative of his sufferings and escape, drawn up for Mr. Webster’s information at the time the claim for salvage was first made, were put into my hands; and his letters from time to time have supplied me with the details. I have, in every case where it was possible, retained his own spirited language; but I feel that had it been possible for me to have seen and heard him, the narrative as taken down from his lips might have been, not, I believe, more correct as to facts, but perhaps more graphic and life-like as to detail.

Still, I am convinced that the simple account of his adventures, his sufferings, his unquenchable spirit, and the manner in which he sustained and did honor to the reputation of our American seamen, amid dangers before which the bravest might shrink, cannot be without its interest to his countrymen, and especially to those of his profession; while every American must feel that his services to the Chilian government were received by them without even an acknowledgement of their value; his just and legal claims being refused almost with contumely. Had captain Brown’s demand for salvage on the treasure rescued by him been backed by the presence of an American frigate, commanded by such a man as captain Ingraham, we should not have seen the British admiral allowed to carry it off from under the eyes of the Chilian authorities, while they feared to serve the process of detainer issued according to the law of the country; nor should we have seen an American citizen brow-beaten by an English officer, while in the discharge of his duty to his owners and to the government in whose employ he was sailing. An American frigate would have taught captain Stewart that no orders from the Chilian government could give him power to seize a vessel sailing under the American flag, commanded by an American citizen.

Such outrages and such injustice to our citizens will never occur when that can be said of the American navy, which one of our own authors has lately said so well of the British. “An English man-of-war seems to be always within one day’s sail of every where. Let political agitation break out in any port on the globe, if there be even a roll of English broadcloth or a pound of English tea, to be endangered thereby, within forty-eight hours an English steamer or frigate is pretty sure to drop anchor in the harbor with an air which seems to say, ‘here I am; does any body want any thing of me?’”[A]Our country should be the guardian of her children, wherever the rights of civilized society are respected, that our citizens may be in danger of outrage and injustice only among savages and outlaws; and we may be assured that in such extremities, they will, for the most part, like captain Brown, be found fully able to protect themselves.

To return to my preface or apology: in offering this narrative to the public, let me repeat my assurance, that captain Brown is answerable only for the facts; for whatever literary defects there may be, I alone am responsible.

E. H. APPLETON.

Cincinnati.