214 AVBS ISLAND. 



he might say or do in aid of the agent of the company, must be under- 

 stood with this express reservation, that the Aves claim was a wholly 

 separate matter, in no way to be compromised or affected by any 

 arrangement which might be made in respect to the rights under the 

 Wallace contract, or by any aid which the undersigned might render 

 in bringing about such an arrangement." 



Certainly this language of reservation and exception of the present 

 claim in its full extent from being in any way affected, or impaired, 

 or compromised by that negotiation, or by any action of the under- 

 signed in relation thereto is, and was intended to be, just as clear, 

 explicit, and comprehensive as language can be. But the undersigned, 

 as appears by the same record^, did not stop with this. The same note 

 proceeds to state that : 



"In reply to a remark from his excellency expressing his prefer- 

 ence that the claim in regard to the previous occupation of the Aves 

 Island, should, if possible, be disposed of in any arrangement which 

 might be made with the agent of the company, the undersigned 

 answered to his excellency as he had previously answered to his excel- 

 lency's ministers upon the same point, that any such disposition of the 

 Aves claim was wholly impossible, not only by reason of the entirely 

 distinct character of the two subjects and of the duty of the under- 

 signed to treat them separately, but also by reason of the fact that the 

 undersigned was not yet fully in possession of all the information 

 requisite for the due adjustment of the Aves claim. He felt himself 

 authorized, however, in view of recent instructions, to repeat the ex- 

 pression of his confident conviction that the government of the United 

 States would deem it its duty to maintain the right of those claimants 

 to full indemnification." 



Surely this was a language which did not admit and could not admit 

 any possible misapprehension ; but out of abundant caution, and to 

 define repeatedly, and, if possible, with still more exactness, the posi- 

 tion of the government of the United States and its legation upon this 

 point, the undersigned again referred to the topic, and representing 

 to his excellency the very grave and serious aspect presented by this 

 Aves claim, even when viewed exclusively upon its own character and 

 circumstances, and urging his excellency to consider the great addi- 

 tional complication and aggravation which must be brought upon it 

 by the Venezuelan government if it should persist in a course of pol- 

 icy inflicting serious loss and injury upon other citizens of the United 

 States having other rights and interests vested under the Wallace 

 contract in the several guano islands considered to belong to the repub- 

 lic, the undersigned proceeded to state that the effect of concluding a 

 satisfactory arrangement with the agent of the company would only 

 be to leave this Aves claim to be afterwards adjusted upon due con- 

 sideration of its own rights and merits, without such additional and 

 extrinsic embarrassment and aggravation. 



The undersigned will quote again from the same note of the 24th of 

 September, 1855, his exact language on this point, which is as follows: 



"The undersigned then, proceeding more immediately to the objects 

 and purposes of Mr. Pickrell^ the agent of the company interested in 

 the Wallace contract, desired his excellency to consider the extremely 



