298 AVES ISLAND. 



to its owner, in the first place, for a tort committed by tlie invasion of 

 his territory, and, in the second place, for the value of all the produce 

 thence derived, and for the damages accruing from the act of spoliation. 

 Yet so great is the impossibility of giving credit to circumstances of 

 such enormity, that Mr. Eames studied particularly to escape from the 

 stress in which he was placed; and if he is told that "it was incum- 

 bent on the Americans to show that it was lawful for them to go to 

 Aves Island and dig out the guano which it might contain," he answers 

 that the burden of proof does not lie with them, but that it does on 

 Venezuela. They could not ignore the fact that a spot situated so short 

 a distance from other places amply known — a spot which must have 

 been frequently observed by navigators ; which bears, in its very 

 name, the mark that was stamped upon it by Spain, its discoverer 

 and sometime owner; which is assigned to that power by various 

 works on geography, and sometimes to Holland also by some writers — 

 which is mentioned and described in various books — which is laid 

 down on almost every chart published — which figures in certain 

 maps as connected with Saba through a sandbank ; that such a spot 

 must necessarily belong to some one, and hence that it was not allow- 

 able to suppose it thitherto undiscovered, and open to occupancy and 

 possession. This consequence acquires additional force when certain 

 indubitable antecedents are recalled to mind. Enough, therefore, to 

 adduce the recent and notorious fact that Americans in the course of 

 1853 pretended to take possession not only of Lobos Islands, in Peru, 

 to which they dispatched vessels to take out guano, but of various islands 

 also of Venezuela, upon which they went, settled down, and clandes- 

 tinely continued, availing themselves of the circumstance that they 

 were uninhabited and that their owner put them to no use. Such was 

 the case with Monjes Islands, upon which, as on Aves Island, were 

 found houses, tools, and other necessary appliances to carry out the 

 pursuit in which the usurpers were engaged^ and where the American 

 bark Tom Corwin, Captain Hiram Bart, was detected, on her trip from 

 Boston to said islands, whither she had sailed to take in the guano, 

 which was, as stated, to He delivered by the people whom they had 

 working there. Such was the case with the Heronanos Islets, where 

 the armed schooner General Monagas found a merchant schooner of 

 the United States, which, making off suddenly, left ashore eighty 

 sacks of guano for want of time to take them in. Such the case with 

 Pie Island, which, being examined by said Venezuelan vessel, gave 

 evidences of bags of guano, ropes, pickaxes, &c., and where after- 

 wards, on the 3d of October, 1855, the same schooner. General Mona- 

 gas, discovered the American schooner White Swan, of Baltimore, 

 Captain J. Henry, who acknowledged that he had proceeded from 

 Laguayra; that he was taking in guano, of which he already had ten 

 tons aboard and sixty-five bags ashore, and then, by flight, escaped a 

 trial and its consequent penalty. Facts of this nature warrant a con- 

 viction on the part of Venezuela that the conduct of the Americans in 

 Aves Island was not more lawful than it was in the other mentioned 

 islands. 



If, as they assume, they were the first discoverers of the guano of 

 Aves Island, and that they could therefore make that discovery the 



