204 AVES ISLAND. 



and did not obtain it by reason of its not having been consented to by 

 the Venezuelan forces there, in consequence of which they protested 

 on their return to that port. Then, if such are the views of that gov- 

 ernment, how does it pretend that not the private citizens of Venez- 

 uela, but the State itself, had no right to compete with its citizens for 

 a share of what was common to all, or that it had no right to take 

 possession of it for its own private benefit, when it was not subject to 

 the incapacity of those few private persons whose occupancy was not 

 accompanied by all the circumstances necessary to constitute a source 

 of property ? 



The government confidently hopes that the preceding observations 

 may be considered as justifying its grave objections to the admission 

 of a reclamation, the formal discussion of which commences now when 

 the legation has received the documents and other proofs that it ex- 

 pected, in order to present it, and cannot, therefore^ have acquired 

 such a degree of urgency as a subject would have when examined in 

 all lights in which no difiiculties and no necessity of considering them 

 had been presented^ and in which, from the first, all identity of opinion 

 in both the parties to it had not failed to appear. 



The undersigned renews to the Hon. Mr. Eames the assurance of his 

 high consideration. 



JACINTO GUTIEEKEZ. 



Hon. Charles Eames, 



Minister Resident of the United States. 



Legation of the United States, 



Caraccas, 3Iarch 31, 1857. 



Sir: The undersigned minister resident of the United States has'the 

 honor to acknowledge the note of the honorable Minister of Foreign 

 Kelations of Venezuela, under date of 27th ultimo, in reply to that of 

 the 20th December last, in which the undersigned continued to press 

 upon the attention of the government of Venezuela the urgent im- 

 portance of an immediate adjustment of the very grave question which 

 has been pending between the two governments for nearly two years 

 in relation to the expulsion of certain citizens of the United States 

 from the guano island of Aves, in December, 1854, by the armed 

 public force of the Venezuelan government. 



The government of the United States has from the first presented 

 this question through the undersigned to the government of Vene- 

 zuela in the form of a demand for full indemnification to these its 

 citizens for all the loss, damage, and injury resulting to them from the 

 grave and wholly unjustifiable outrage which it considers to have been 

 perpetrated upon them in the act of their expulsion, in the spoliation- 

 of their property which then took place, and in their continued ex- 

 clusion, to their great loss and injury, by Venezuela from the peace- 

 able possession and usufruct of the guano on that island ; and it was 

 the principal object of the undersigned, in his note of the 20th of 

 December last, having in view the maintenance of friendly relations 



