386 AVES ISLAND. 



offering the undersigned an interview on Monday, if he should deem 

 it convenient, he is informed that the only question relative to the 

 case of the Island of Aves which the government of the United 

 States considers open is one of detail in regard to the character and 

 amount of the indemnity that the claimants are to receive ; that this 

 conclusion is exactly the reverse of the erroneous one which the under- 

 signed inferred from your excellency's note of the 24th, supposing a 

 disposition in the chief of the State to hear the envoy extraordinary 

 of the negotiation before finally determining on the value of the de- 

 fense; and that, in your excellency's expressing, in your note of the 

 22d, a hope that the powers of the minister of Venezuela would au- 

 thorize him to arrange those details, it was not your intention to 

 intimate any wish that the question shoujd be transferred from Carac- 

 cas to Washington, but that, on the contrary, you expected, in that 

 case, to convince him of the propriety of having the settlement effected 

 at Caraccas, where the proof has been offered, and where an agent of 

 the reclamation now is for the purpose of lending any assistance which 

 may conduce to such an end. 



In the name of his government, tho undersigned replies as follows: 



He is obliged to accept the explanations which represent as errone- 

 ous the conclusion which has been spoken of, but, in making this ac- 

 knowledgment, the undersigned may be permitted to set forth the 

 facts and circumstances which relieve him from the obligation of 

 atonement for having adopted a forced or arbitrary inference. 



He knew that Mr. Eames, who initiated the discussion on the 20th 

 of December, 1856, closed it three months afterwards by fulminating 

 against the government of Venezuela the serious and in every respect 

 unfounded charge of protracting it since Marcli, 1855. He knew that 

 your excellency's government entertained the same mistaken opinion, 

 from your note of the 11th of September last, in which it assumed the 

 right of refusing to Venezuela the right which every sovereign State 

 possesses of opposing reasons with reasons, proofs with proofs, and, 

 in fine, of presenting her title to the sovereignty of*the Island of Aves. 

 He has read, finally, in your excellency's note of the 22d, that the 

 note of Senor Gutierrez of the 31st, of last year, a long justification 

 of Venezuela in the matter, had not succeeded in changing the opinion 

 of the President in regard to the point of responsibility, or as respects 

 the propriety of renewing the discussion ; but in the same document 

 he has read the words: "Nevertheless, before replying to the commu- 

 nication of Senor Gutierrez, it will be very satisfactory to me to see 

 you," &c. 



Even supposing that the cabinet at Washington adhered strongly 

 to its system of laying down as unquestionable the cardinal point of 

 the controversy, without waiting for the reasons from the opposite 

 side, as, it would seem, ought to be expected from equity and from 

 treaty, still it was natural to believe, in view of the words quoted 

 verbatim, that the President of the United States, after Venezuela's 

 special mission, would b'e found disposed to hear the undersigned be- 

 fore definitively determining on the value of the defense. The follow- 

 ing circumstances necessarily concurred in the support of so rational 

 an interpretation : 



