The Adventures of John Jewitt / Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island

ONLY SURVIVOR OF THE CREW OF THE SHIP BOSTON DURING A CAPTIVITY OF NEARLY THREE YEARS AMONG THE INDIANS OF NOOTKA SOUND IN VANCOUVER ISLAND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

A sad interest attaches to this little book. Although published after his death, and therefore deprived of his final revision, it was not the last work which Dr. Robert Brown did. His manuscript was actually completed many months ago, but at his own request it was returned to him to receive a last careful overhaul at his hands. This revision had been practically finished, and the MS. lay ready uppermost among the papers in his desk, where it was found after his death. Dr. Brown died on the morning of the 26th of October, 1895, working almost to his last hour. Before the leader he had written for the Standard on the evening of the 25th had come under the eyes of its readers, the hand that had penned it was cold in death. Between the evening and the morning he went home. He was only fifty-three, but a righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest.
And in one sense Dr. Brown needed rest—ay, even this last and sweetest rest of all. His life had been one of unremitting work—work well done, which the busy, hurrying world mostly heeded not, knowing naught of the hand that did it. Some twenty years ago, when I first knew him, he was a fair, stalwart Northerner, full of vigour, mirthful also, and apparently looking out on the voyage of life with the confident, joyous eye of one who felt he had strength within him to conquer. His latter days were saddened by incessant toil, performed in weakness of body and jadedness of brain, and by the feeling that his best work, the work into which he put his rich stores of knowledge, was neither recognised nor requited as it should have been.
To a sensitive man the daily wear and tear of a journalist's life in London is often murderous, always exhausting—and Dr. Brown was very sensitive. Beneath the genial exterior, which seemed to indicate a careless, light-hearted spirit, lay great depths of feeling, and a tenderness that shrank from expressing itself. The man was too proud and self-restrained to betray these depths even to those nearest and dearest to him. This was at once a nobility in him and a weakness. Had he opened his heart more, he would have chafed and fretted less, little annoyances would not have become mountain loads of care. But the truth is, Dr. Brown was not cut out for the life of an everyday journalist, either by training, habits, or disposition. The ideal post for him would have been that of a professor at some great university, where he could have had abundant leisure to pursue his favourite studies, where young men would have surrounded him and listened with delight to the outpouring of the wealth of lore with which his capacious intellect was stored. His lot was otherwise cast, and he accepted it manfully, battling with his destiny to his last hours, grimly and in silence of soul, intent only on one thing, to lift his children clear above the necessity for treading the same rough road upon which he had worn himself out.