AVES ISLAND. 291 



indispensable, in order to remove the dangers which, impended over 

 the peace of hoth republics, directly to inform his excellency the Pres- 

 ident of the gravity of the case, for which purpose he begged that an 

 interview should be granted to him. Through the merest condescen- 

 sion, the President granted the interview ; and what then took place, 

 according to the very language of the legation, tends to set forth, in 

 unobstructed light, the course pursued by Mr. Eames under the circum- 

 stances, and how he applied all the efforts of his energy to procure the 

 j)reponderance of Pickrell's claim, subordinating Shelton's to its suc- 

 cess. 



It will immediately strike any one that the motive and the object of 

 such an audience were merely to create a deep impression on the mind 

 of the government touching the consequences which might result from 

 its refusal to go into the new contract, for which Pickrell had applied, 

 and that all else that was said in the course of that audience was mere 

 tinsel, with which it was attempted to conceal the threat. After recap- 

 itulating the facts, according to his mode of viewing them, up to the 

 time of Mr, Pickrell's arrival in Caraccas with dispatches, which went 

 to say that, in view of the public and, indeed, national importance of 

 the business, he should, by his good offices and by the personal and 

 official influence of the legation, sustain Mr. Pickrell in the defense 

 and in the recognition of the rights conferred on citizens of the United 

 States by the contract of 1854. Mr. Eames then touched upon the 

 case of those Americans by a repetition of what he had already stated 

 before. His excellency having, thereupon, remarked that it was pre- 

 ferable, in the first instance, to adjust this claim, or that the company 

 should assume its adjustment upon themselves, he declared that such 

 a thing was entirely out of the range of possibility, not only from the 

 essentially distinct character of both questions, and on account of his 

 duty separately to treat them, but because, also, he was not yet fully 

 in possession of all the information required for a proper preparation 

 of the claim for Aves Island. He added that he considered himself 

 authorized, in view of recent instructions, to state again a conviction 

 that the government of the United States would deem it its duty to 

 sustain the right of the claimants to a full indemnification. 



''The undersigned," he continues in the statement of that confer- 

 ence, "then passing to the more immediate objects and aims of Mr. 

 Pickrell, the agent of the company interested in Wallace's contract, 

 begged his excellency to consider the extremely unfortunate aspect 

 under which all this guano question^ between Venezuela and the citi- 

 zens of the United States, presented itself to that government. That 

 a whole series of grave and highly disagreeable circumstances, each of 

 them a separate occurrence, although all bore a common relation with 

 rights of American citizens in the guano islands, had followed each 

 other in rapid succession. The violent dispossession of American citi- 

 zens who were on Aves Island, the making, at the same time, of a 

 contract with Wallace, its annulment by Venezuela, baffling the lawful 

 hopes of the interested parties, and inflicting great injury upon them, 

 were facts, each of which tended to aggravate the other, and to com- 

 plicate any negotiation which might seek a satisfactory settlement of 

 all or of any of them. The undersigned earnestly begged his excel- 



