140 AVES ISLAND. 



he some men-of-war cruising about to protect our citizens, and that 

 somebody is to blame that it is not done. Our country is not consid- 

 ered to be of much account in the way of protecting our commerce, as 

 well as I could learn. 



The French and English, Dutch and Danish men-of-war people, 

 when they came there, inquired where our men-of-war all were ? I 

 felt mighty mean when I saw the stars and stripes hauled down, and 

 the Venezuelan rag hoisted in its place. Captain Gibbs came away 

 in a few hours. He was not allowed, unless he chose to make fight, 

 to take off but very little of the provisions and other things. He left 

 two launches or boats, most all of the implements, and tools, and bar- 

 rows, and nearly all the provisions, I should say; he left seven or 

 eight thousand dollars' worth, at least, of property, besides the wharves 

 and houses and sheds. What he did bring away was not of much 

 use or value, except the cannon and small-arras, for the Venezuelans 

 kept most of the provisions for themselves to eat. They kept the chief 

 of our water casks. I came off on the Amazon, and went to Holmes' 

 Hole, and got there 28th of January, 1855 ; and my passage was set- 

 tled by claimants. The Amazon had about 490 tons of guano on board. 

 The Viator had but part of a cargo, and the Mary Pearce was not 

 allowed to take any. Captain Gribbs got everything he could get 

 away, or was allowed to. He says he feels bound and desirous, as a 

 citizen of the United States, to express his sentiments about these 

 transactions. The island, if well managed, could have been made to 

 yield more than two millions of dollars, and the Venezuelans, in my 

 opinion, had no more right to take it from us than they had to take a 

 ship on the high seas. He says he don't know how this insult may 

 be plastered up ; but he considers it a most rascally affair, and if the 

 government don't make the mulatto vagabonds pay for this piratical 

 act, and all damages, and give up the island, they might as well quit 

 trying to be a government. He says he looks at it as worse than the 

 Black Warrior case, or the Greytown case, or any other case that he 

 has heard of, except the late massacres at Panama and Virgin bay ; 

 and that he should not wonder if those who perpetrated them, (for they 

 are the same breed of people,) were encouraged to the act by having 

 heard that the United States had not done anything in this case, and 

 that it was safe to impose on a Yankee. He says he has insisted on 

 putting in this expression of his opinions, so that they be wrote down 

 in the records. 



JOHN McCABE. 



Mr. Sanford to Mr. Marcy. 



Derby, Connecticut, July 3, 1856. 

 Sir: Messrs. Lang & Delano, of Boston, have preferred to the de- 

 partment certain claims for indemnity, &c., &c., on account of the 

 outrage and spoliation in December, 1854, by Venezuela, at Shelton's 

 Isle, and for rights to said isle and the guano thereon. Captain James 



