222 AVES ISLAND. 



ezuela by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the French govern- 

 ment. 



And then all this official and scientific appreciation of the work of 

 the Venezuelan commission was formally recognized and accepted by 

 the Venezuelan government, for which, in consequence of these pro- 

 ceedings^ Colonel Codazzi received from the French government the 

 decoration of the legion of honor. The Venezuelan government by a 



special law of Congress of 22d ■ , 1844, enabled him to accept 



that distinction, and afterwards by other law of Congress of 17th of 

 May, 1845^ reciting ''^that the services of Colonel Codazzi in the for- 

 mation of the map of Venezuela, and in its publication with the geog- 

 raphy and history of the country, are of great importance," it is 

 enacted ''that in payment of $15,000 granted to him by the laws of 

 16th of March, 1840, and 23d of February, 1841, for the purpose of 

 engraving the map of the republic and printing its geography and 

 history, the one 1,322 existing copies of the said work shall be received, 

 and sold for account of the nation.'' 



Such being the legislative and administrative and diplomatic history 

 of this official geographical delineation of the whole of Venezuela by 

 the Venezuelan government, it is most manifest and indisputable that 

 the islands claimed by this work as Venezuelan, are so claimed by 

 that government ; and to the islands which this work does not claim 

 as Venezuelan, all claim is by that government repudiated, and that 

 repudiation is published to the world. 



Seventy-one islands of all classes, the greater part of them small 

 and uninhabited, are so claimed as Venezuelan. They are all deline- 

 ated on the great chart of Venezuela. They are all — every one of 

 them — mentioned in the accompanying volume, numbered, named, 

 and distributed among those sea-board provinces of the republic to 

 which they are considered as respectively belonging. They all reap- 

 pear, each in its place, on the separate maps of these provinces which 

 are found in the atlas. They reappear, the whole seventy-one, in the 

 map which in the atlas delineates the republic of Colombia. They 

 reappear, every one of them, in the two maps which in the atlas 

 delineate the republic of Venezuela as it was in 1810, and as it was in 

 1840, 



But neither on the great chart, nor on any one of these maps of 

 Colombia, of Venezuela, or its provinces, does the island of Aves in 

 question appear, nor is it anywhere mentioned in the geographical 

 volume. To perceive the whole conclusive force of this fact, it must 

 be borne in mind that the great chart of Venezuela covers twenty-four 

 square feet, bears date of Caraccas, 1840, is dedicated to the constit- 

 uent Congress of 1830, and contains an inscription setting forth " the 

 ten years' labor" dedicated to the perfecting of its "most minute de- 

 tails," and referring to acts of the government, above cited, which 

 give it its undisputed official character. 



But if this omission of the Aves in question on the maps of Venez- 

 uela and Colombia were all, there might perhaps seem to be a possi- 

 bility of some pretext, or shadow of pretext, for the allegation that its 

 omission was accidental, or the result of oversight, and so should not 

 be held as affirmatively excluding all pretension of title to it by the 



