316 AVES ISLAND. 



exhibit no documents showing that they have cleared from some custom- 

 house." 



According to the law of the 15th of Aprils 1854, the ports open for 

 importation and exportation were those of Ciudad Bolivar, Laguayra, 

 Puerto Cahello, La Vela, Maricaibo, and Barcelona, for importation for 

 consumption only ; and for exportation, the ports of Cumana, Carupano, 

 Cariaquito, Cano Colerado, Barrancas, Pampatur, Juan G-riego, Soledad 

 y Cumarebo ; and, temporarily, the ports of Guiria and Maturin, until 

 the establishment of custom-houses at Cariaquito and Cano Colerado. 



With the exception of Margarita, there is no island of Venezuela in 

 which ports have been designated and opened for foreign commerce, 

 nor for any other object of any nature whatsoever ; it is, therefore, 

 evident that the Americans could not lawfully, and without violation 

 of all the principles and laws which have been adduced, either anchor 

 at Aves Island, land thereon, or introduce houses and implements, &c., 

 certainly much less apply to their own benefit and export a product of 

 the territory, or one inherent to it, such as is guano. 



Mr. Eames thinks that Venezuela cannot, with any show of reason, 

 deny the acknowledgment, to which we have already referred, ''be- 

 cause it is a fact of universal notoriety that these claimants in landing 

 on Aves Island in June, 1854, and proceeding to make the best use 

 that they could of that desert island, did nothing more than what all 

 men had been at liberty to do, and which they would have done when- 

 ever they might have deemed it expedient, at any period anterior to 

 the existence of the republic of Venezuela, and during that of its 

 existence, without any kind of impediment, prohibition, or reclamation 

 of any government, and less from all, from the government of Vene- 

 zuela." 



Mr. Eames has been contented to assert these facts without adding 

 any proof of their consistency, even of the slightest kind. But in view 

 of the multitude of Spanish laws which forbid access to the possessions 

 of his Catholic Majesty in America, and which are still in vigor in all 

 cases in which they have not been supplanted by other enactments of 

 Colombia and Venezuela, in which States, though the rigorous policy 

 of the ancient metropolis may have been relaxed, this prohibition has 

 been kept up in the manner already explained, it is no easy task to 

 secure belief for such assertions as these. It may be that, in some cases, 

 foreign vessels, driven by stress of weather and by storms, or availing 

 of the circumstances of locality and of the seclusion of the island, may 

 have approached it, and that masters and passengers both may have 

 visited it, as was done, it is said, by the Dutch for the purpose of fish- 

 ing and gathering birds' eggs. These facts, however, admitting their 

 veracity, which we do not admit, would not make in the least against 

 the dominion of Spain or of Venezuela, because as transient and clan- 

 destine visits only are here spoken of, without the slightest idea of 

 appropriating the island and putting themselves in lieu of its owner, 

 without his privity, they could in no degree influence the integrity of 

 his rights. If evidence were adduced that the fact of such visits came 

 to the knowledge of one or the other of the States, and that they, in 

 spite of the knowledge that every one made such use of the island as 

 was exclusively reserved for the Spaniards or the Venezuelans, tolerated 



