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]