AVES ISLAND. 33 



importance that yon seem to, and we are constrained to abide by its 

 effects_, whatever they may be. Had the other paper, the asserted 

 "agreement," signed by Gibbs and Lang, been under consideration 

 by us when we wrote that letter, we should have said it was the boun- 

 den duty of our agents to preserve the peace, and it would have been 

 inexcusable fot them not t<:' >ave exerted themselves to that end ; and 

 that of signing such document 'was the only means, or the best means, 

 in their judgment, to prevent outbreak and the probable effusion of 

 blood on either side, such course was excusable, though the unauthor- 

 ized act to which the agents would have been ' ' constrained ' ' by such 

 circumstances could have had no effect or force on our rights ; and we 

 should have so said, without reference to the direct falsehood and fraud, 

 ■which we are noio satisfied were practiced by Dias to procure it, and 

 which utterly vitiates it, even loitliout such ^'■constraint." 



And now that we have arrived, in regular order of time, to ourlettei 

 of the 14th ultimo, we proceed to notice what is said in your commu- 

 nication respecting its contents. In referring in that letter to the 

 Dias " permit, license, or notice," we say that ''Dias, on December 

 13, had draivn up and signed a paper in Spanish, {on file in your 

 department,) and which our agent, Captain Gibbs , was constrained under 

 the circumstances to take, and lohich Dias styled his 'permit.' " You 

 extract and quote this sentence in your communication. A careful 

 reperusal of the papers on file in your department must, however, 

 satisfy you that, as liefore suggested, there is in the first place, a mis- 

 conception of fact as to the particular paper we specially referred to, 

 and that it was confounded with the asserted ' ' agreement ' ' with which 

 Mr. Eames was "met" at Caraccas, which we did not and could not 

 refer to, insomuch as the existence of that paper had not then been 

 suggested in any of the papers filed in the case. This misconception 

 is not unimportant, for the character of the two papers are not iden- 

 tical. And in the second place, there is a misconception of the purport 

 of our remarks above quoted in relation to the paper, that toe did so 

 refer to. This will be quite apparent by a reperusal of those remarks 

 and of your letter. As we have already observed, we did not intend 

 to convey the impression that that paper styled a "permit" by 

 "Dias," drawn up in Spanish by him, and signed by him and by no 

 one else, was so signed (by Dias) under duress, or that it was not a 

 " voluntary proceeding " by him. We did not refer to any paper as 

 having been "signed" by Gibbs, either voluntarily or under "duress," 

 and in respect of the "permit," the remark made by us that he was 

 "constrained" under the circumstances to "take" (not " sign") it, ap- 

 pears by your letter to have been misinterpreted by you in another 

 particular. We state, in the last paragraph but two of our letter, 

 containing the remark just quoted, as follows : 



" It has been contended that we admitted the right of the Venezu- 

 elan government to Shelton's Isle, and the right of Captain Dias to 

 drive us off! In other words, that we were trespassers, and this, too, 

 in the paper given by Dias to Captain Gibbs. How perfectly idle, and 

 worse than idle, is such pretense. We might have resisted Dias and 

 his soldiers with some loss of human life on both sides. We ought, 

 perhaps, to have done so. We believe we could have easily chastise^ 

 Ex. Doc. 10 3 



