AVES ISLAND. 303 



right of Venezuela to said island. 3d. That they could, with the 

 greatest ease and best success, have resisted the landing of the incon- 

 siderable Venezuelan force, or expelled it after it got on shore. 4th. 

 That they had abused the conditional permission which had been 

 granted to them after the intimation to depart had been given to them. 

 5th. That a mere order, without resort to violence, was sufficient to 

 enforce such departure. 6th. That they themselves would have ren- 

 dered a resort to force lawful in the event that it should have proved 

 necessary to use force. (Tth. That they had vessels in which they could 

 embark, not some merely, but the whole of them, and go to the nearest 

 place and extend protest ; and that, instead of such a course, they con- 

 tinued availing themselves of the permit^ which they now allege was 

 interfered with in violence, error, and fraud. 8th. That they were 

 well informed of the tenor of the document, and signed it with perfect 

 understanding of its contents. 



Mr. Eames proceeds and says: ^'That it is not denied that, since 

 such expulsion, Venezuela has continued occupying and possessing the 

 island and its guano, for her own benefit and against those claimants, 

 through the appliance of such armed force ; nor is it denied that great 

 losses and damages, both immediate and consequential, have resulted 

 to their detriment from said expulsion and adverse possession." 



The advantage which Venezuela may have derived from Aves Island 

 is but trifling ; for, from her having sold the guano for an insignificant 

 price to other individuals belonging to the United States, the profits 

 of the transfer must have inured to them, and this, too, from the 

 pressure exerted on this government in the name of that of the United 

 States, as it has already been amply stated. When the executive power 

 annulled Wallace's contract for, among numerous reasons, a failure to 

 comply with its conditions, it had intended to manage the administra- 

 tion of the guano interest in such a way as to be beneficial to the 

 nation, and to derive from it all the advantages which it held out; but 

 Mr. Eames became so urgent for a reinstatement of the former contract, 

 or the execution of a new one, little differing from the annulled instru- 

 ment, that trifling were the advantages secured for the State; whilst 

 the main of those advantages were, in the transaction, reserved for the 

 citizens of the United States who were so zealously sustained by their 

 legation in Caraccas. Had it not taken up Pickrell's contract with all 

 its might, nothing is more certain than that it would not have been 

 made, and in that case the guano might have been disposed of in a 

 desirable and proper manner. It should, therefore, not be forgotten 

 that the profits spoken of have accrued to the Americans, and that 

 nothing but the turn which the question took, and the extent to which 

 it went, added to a wish to preserve friendship and peace between the 

 two nations, prevented Venezuela from deriving the best returns from 

 the guano, both in Aves Island and in the other dependencies of the 

 republic. A statement to that effect was made by the Secretary of the 

 Treasury and by the Secretary of Foreign Eolations in the reports of 

 their respective departments, transmitted to Congress in 1856, of which 

 Mr. Eames must have been informed, as both were sent to him. Be- 

 sides this, he had taken cognizance of the report of the former minister 

 whilst it was still passing through the press, and, without demurrer 



