AVES ISLAND. 119 



TO THE SEVENTH. 



When I landed on Shelton's Isle, I had not been informed that any 

 person had ever inhabited, possessed, or occupied it, or that any gov- 

 ernment had ever claimed or exercised any jurisdiction or ownership 

 over it in anywise, though I did then, as I do now, regard it as quite 

 as probable that the island had many times been visited, and that the 

 egg gatherers from the islands of St. Thomas, Guadaloupe, St. Kitts, 

 ■St. Eustatia^ and other West India Islands — the nearest inhabited 

 regions to it — had visited it to gather birds' eggs for sale in the said 

 islands, as is their practice in respect to most of the desert rocks or 

 keys in the Caribbean sea, not possessed by any government ; and 

 that, in fact^ as the said isle was without wood or fresh water, it could 

 not be permanently inhabited by man for any longer period, without 

 supplies of those necessaries from elsewhere. I especially declare that 

 I had never heard at that time, nor, until the 13th of December, 1854, 

 did I once hear it intimated that the republic of Venezuela had any 

 claim whatever to said isle, or that the same was under the jurisdic- 

 tion of said republic ; and if I had so heard, I would have regarded 

 such claim, as I did when I first heard it advanced, as utterly prepos- 

 terous, insomuch as Shelton's Isle is more than two hundred and fifty 

 miles in the sea distant from the nearest admitted possessions of Vene- 

 zuela inhabited by her citizens, which is more than twice the distance 

 said isle is from several of the long settled and still inhabited wind- 

 ward West India Islands, possessed by the Danish, Dutch, French, 

 and British governments, all much more ancient than that of Vene- 

 5iuela. 



TO THE EIGHTH. 



I made as full an examination of said isle when I first landed on it 

 in April, 1854, as I deemed essential to ascertain satisfactorily to myself 

 the quality and quantity of the guano thereon ; and in several places 

 on the isle I adopted means to find the thickness of the deposits with 

 which the isle was covered. I had, as before stated, been formerly 

 engaged for several months in the procurement of guano, and had 

 acquired considerable experience therein, and I made up my mind as 

 to the quantity of merchantable guano on said isle, and that there 

 could be obtained therefrom, and laden on board vessels, over one 

 hundred and fifty thousand tons^ and that of said quantity at least 

 one half, or seventy-five thousand tons, might be classed as first rate 

 guano ; and that said estimate of one hundred and fifty thousand 

 tons was exclusive of a large quantity which, from various causes, 

 should not be classed as good, merchantable guano, although it was 

 mostly of sufficient value to bear freight to the United States, at the 

 prices such guano was selling for in 1854 in the United States. I 

 deem it proper for me, in confirmation of the correctness of my esti- 

 mate, to state that I have seen an extract from an official letter or 

 report, purporting to have been made by the British naval officer I 

 have before mentioned, dated August 1, 1854, which has been pub- 

 lished in England and in the United States, and which purports to 



