328 AVES ISLAND. 



take him and his laborers away, and for this reason he felt compelled 

 to sign the paper, not considering it to be of any value save that, for 

 the time, it protected them from outrage. The reason is a false one, 

 because there were at the time three large vessels at anchor, one of 

 which of eight hundred tons' burden, the other of five hundred tons, 

 the former being amply sufficient to carry all the laborers, their appa- 

 ratus and armament included. Besides this, the want of vessels could 

 have had no other effect than that of delaying their departure, not of 

 forcing them to the signature of the document. 



''William P. Gibbs, master of a vessel, on the 23d of August, 1855, 

 in the city of Boston, before Charles Herner, J. P., declares to the 

 same effect as J. F. Safford^ and almost in his very words. What is 

 added by him to the declaration had, with some slight variations^ 

 already been stated in George McGeorge's deposition." 



George W. Nickell's declaration refers neither to Colonel Dias's 

 permit nor to the departure of the agents and laborers of the Boston ' 

 companies. It merely sets forth the circumstance of his having sailed 

 from New York on the 15th of January, 1855, for Aves Island, with 

 the object of loading with a cargo of guano, which he was prevented 

 from taking in, because he was forbidden doing so by the Venezuelan 

 garrison of the island, from which he was ordered by the public force 

 to depart. 



This very singular protest does not mention the ground on which 

 the protestant stands to urge the responsibility of Venezuela for the 

 damages which he suffered on that occasion. Whose was Aves Island? 

 Was it Lang & Delano's, whose agents arrived there first? Was it 

 Shelton & Co.'s, whose representatives reached there at a later period? 

 Was it George W. Nickell's, who went to the island in January, 1855? 

 In order to maintain an attitude of consistency the legation has been 

 compelled to sustain the rights of Lang & Delano alone, without 

 attending to the fact, on the score of acquisition, that others, the agents 

 of Shelton & Co., had seen it before, but had not taken possession of 

 it. If in January, 1855, the island continued to be res nuIUus, the 

 whole structure of Mr. Eames' claim falls to the ground, resting, as it 

 does^ on the principle that '-'the discoverers of guano in a derelict, 

 uninhabited, and uninhabitable island, which was not included in the 

 jurisdiction nor reduced into the possession of any power, had a right 

 to land thereon and make use of it." This Mr. Nickell did not dis- 

 cover the guano; he neither took nor kept possession of it; he had no 

 intention of retaining the island until he had exhausted that substance ; 

 he was not ordered to quit the island ; he incurred no expenses in the 

 undertaking ; he did not present himself, for the first time, to the island 

 until it was actually occupied by the public force of Venezuela. Lastly, 

 he does not come within any of the cases applicable to the other claim- 

 ants. The observations suggested by the discovery of this document 

 among the others transmitted by Mr. Eames seem not to have deserved 

 an answer, a silence which argues that he discovered no way of issue 

 out of the difiiculty. 



The tardy and mutilated deposition of N. C. Gibbs was made on the 

 12th of April, 1856, before a notary of the city of New York, sixteen 

 months after the occurrence of the facts which it relates. Although 



