AVES ISLAND. 301 



This cannot be allowed to pass by without suitable explanations. 

 These rest on the declarations, made under oath, of Colonel Domingo 

 Dias, First Lieutenant Nicholas Pereira, and First Commandant Man- 

 uel Cotarro, persons who intervened in the matter, as officers of the 

 Venezuelan navy, during the occurrences at Aves Island. Their depo- 

 sitions are in no way to be confounded with those presented by Mr. 

 Eames. In this lies she difference ; the latter came from unknown 

 individuals; the former from public functionaries; the latter were 

 taken without the knowledge of Venezuela ; the former might have 

 been witnessed by Mr. Fames, who was invited to hear them, and 

 failed to be present, as was done by Mr. Sanford ; in the latter, the 

 very persons interested are witnesses and parties both ; in the former 

 no such disability is found ; in the latter, interest, stimulated by ava- 

 rice, figures as the prime mover ; in the former, the love of truth alone 

 controls ; the latter do not fitly accord with the circumstances of the 

 event ; the former are most easily explained by them ; the latter can- 

 not cease to be mere copies, although they come through a very respec- 

 table channel ; the former are transmitted through an equally worthy 

 channel, and are, moreover, accompanied by certificates in all due 

 form ; in the latter, perchance, it might be impossible to find the wit- 

 nesses and subject them to the test of cross-examination ; in the former, 

 the declarants may be brought forward whenever desired, and be sub- 

 mitted to the searchings of counter-proofs, or any other scrutiny of 

 truth. 



Now what did occur, according to the unvarying statements of those 

 persons of character, is as follows: On the 12th of December, at 7, p. 

 m., Colonel Dias arrived at Aves Island, where he found three vessels 

 at anchor. In the morning of the following day he went ashore to 

 ascertain what they [?] were doing there, and found that they had 

 come to take in guano ; were on shore with eighty men digging it out 

 and putting it on board ; having in their possession, among other 

 articles, two pieces of artillery, six-pouilders, with the necessary am- 

 munition, some fifty muskets, thirty rifles, thirty cutlasses, twenty-five 

 pikes, fifty pairs of pistols, and balls, eleven to the pound, revolvers, 

 and two hundred weight of powder. Whilst, in the Venezuelan war- 

 schooner, there were not more than from twenty-five to twenty-seven 

 soldiers, with that number of guns, and a four-pounder. When the 

 Americans were asked what they were doing there, they said that they 

 were working out guano, as they had done in other islands of Vene- 

 zuela ; for instance in Hermanos Island, whence they took a schooner 

 load ; that they had settled upon Aves Island, because their discovery 

 there, by the republic, could not prove so easy. They alleged no right 

 to the island, but, on the contrary, they admitted that it did not be- 

 long to them or to the United States. When, in pursuance of his 

 order to prevent the clandestine exportation of guano from the repub- 

 lic. Colonel Dias directed them to stop digging, they then stated to 

 him the losses which they had suffered, and the expenses incurred, 

 begging him, in view of these considerations, to allow them, for hu- 

 manity's sake, to continue loading the three vessels there anchored, 

 which had not guano enough on board to serve as ballast. 



Having obtained leave to do so, yet still doubtful whether it would 



