308 AVES ISLAND. 



ing of the document wliicli he signed with Gibhs, ''that said Domingo 

 Dias finally drew up a document in Spanish, copy Avhereof is annexed, 

 ordering the rest to sign it or immediately to leave the island," And 

 especially this from the declaration of N. C. Gribbs, in which he speaks 

 of the document, and affirms the following: "I have since seen here 

 the translation of the paper which Dias signed, a paper which I know 

 was sent to the Department of State of the United States by Mr. Shel- 

 ton^ as soon as he received it from me in February, 1855, and also a 

 copy of the copy signed by Lang and myself, and retained by Dias, 

 and a translation of it procured by Mr. Shelton from said department, 

 and from said translations it appears that such papers are substan- 

 tially the same." 



The Americans having assented to the right of Venezuela to the 

 island, and being left at liberty to continue, conditionally, working 

 out the guano. Colonel Dias departed, leaving on the island no more 

 than one officer, attended by ten soldiers numbering as many mus- 

 kets, together with a four-pounder piece. What has already been 

 related then took place. 



Now, then, let us revert to three periods of time : the arrival of the 

 former Venezuelan schooner, the occurrences after its departure and 

 until the appearance of the second one, and the facts attending the 

 arrival of the latter, and inquire whether it be possible that violence 

 should have been offered to the Americans ? It is a morally and physi- 

 cally impossible fact, standing in contradiction of what the world 

 knows of the courage, of the daring, of the love of property, and of 

 the other qualities which mark the American character, that, with the 

 elements of power which the Americans had at command, twenty-five 

 soldiers, with Colonel Dias's single small vessel, should have reduced 

 to fear eighty men, armed with every form of weapon, masters of an 

 island, for the defense of which they relied on three vessels supplied 

 with artillery, threatened, in the possession of their own, with having 

 their jDroperty wrested from them, and with interruption in the peace- 

 able exercise of an industry from which they expected great profits and 

 fabulous wealth. The violence which annuls contracts is that which 

 neither can be avoided nor causes empty fear. Who, then, shall say 

 that eighty men, under most favorable circumstances^ were not in a con- 

 dition to d^fy twenty-five men at every disadvantage, or, at least to re- 

 lieve themselves from their fears by a withdrawal from the island? But, 

 it may be asked, they made some show at least of resistance, to evince 

 their sense of the unlawful order which commanded' them to depart ? 

 Nothing of the kind. They appeal to Colonel Dias's benevolence. 

 They beg of him permission to continue taking in guano. They thank 

 him for it in courteous words ; compel him to eat with them, and add 

 a few presents bespeaking their gratification. Was this the natural 

 conduct of men who had yielded to compulsion ; of men who must 

 have been excited and enraged by the act of those who had just wrung 

 from them so important an acknowledgment ; men who could have 

 room for no other thought than that of wrea.king signal revenge; men 

 who, in the act itself, would have jDroceeded to protest and demand 

 reparation, supposing that they had not made the protest before Col- 

 <3nel Dias himself? But they went further in their exhibition of com- 



