l the injustice which it has been my lot to
sustain, I have ever determined--for the sake of my family--to whom my
character is an heir-loom--that no obloquy shall follow me to the grave,
for none have I merited. On the day these volumes see the light, this
resolution will be partially fulfilled. On that day I shall have
completed the eighty-third year of a career strangely chequered, yet not
undistinguished; and, therefore, the opinions of either Chilians or
Brazilians are now of small moment to me in comparison with a reputation
which has been demmed worthy of belonging to history. None of the
present ruling powers in either Chili or Brazil can possibly be offended
with me for giving a guardedly temperate documentary narrative of what
must hereafter form the basis of their national annals. I do not for a
moment contemplate that men of enlightened views such as now direct the
affairs of both countries have either part or sympathy with
self-interested adventurers who in popular revolutions too often rise to
the surface, and for a time make confusion worse confounded; till
replaced--as a matter of course, no less than by necessity--by men of
greater grasp of mind and more exalted aspirations.

But this is as it maybe--my reputation as a British seaman is to me of
the highest moment, and it shall not be sullied after my death by the
aspersions of those who wilfully revenged the thwarting of their
anti-Imperial designs, by imputations which can alone enter into the
minds of men devoid of generous impulses and therefore incapable of
appreciating higher motives. I have not followed their example, but
where it is necessary to bring forward such persons--they will be viewed
through the medium of their own documents, which are incontestible and
irresistible, and which would as easily convict me of untruth as they
convict my maligners of practices unworthy the honour of a nation.

To my own countrymen these volumes can scarcely be matter of
indifference; though, perhaps, few reflect that the numerous fleets of
British merchantmen which now frequent both shores of South America, are
the consequence of the deliverance of these vast territories from an
exclusive colonial yoke. It is true that England had previously formed a
treaty with Portugal, permitting English vessels to trade to her South
American Colonies, but such was the influence of Portuguese merchants
with the local governments, that it was nearly inoperative; so that,