412 AVES ISLAND. 



resumed tlie exportation of guano from Isla de Aves, as soon as Mr. 

 Pickrell renewed the Wallace contract. 



The other was, to accumulate the two claims, so as afterwards to 

 dispose of them at the will of the parties with opposing rights. 



So it was proposed by his excellency, the President of Venezuela, in 

 the conference alluded -to in Mr. Eames's memorandum, 24th Septem- 

 ber ; but the United States legation refused to adopt the measure. 



'^'In reply to a remark from his excellency, expressing his preference 

 that the claim in regard to the previous occupation of the Aves Island 

 should, if possible, be disposed of in any arrangement which might be 

 made with the agent of the company, the undersigned answered, as he 

 had before answered to his excellency's minister u]3on the same point, 

 that any such disposition of the Aves claim was wholly impossible, 

 not only by reason of the entirely distinct character of the two sub- 

 jects, and of the duty of the undersigned to treat them separately, but 

 also by reason of the fact that the undersigned was not yet fully in . 

 possession of all the information requisite for the due adjustment of 

 the Aves claim." 



What is, however, most strange in the incidental question bearing 

 upon the fact of Mr. Eames's excepting or not Isla de Aves in the 

 Pickrell contract of 29th September, it is that the inclusion is proved 

 by the confession of Mr. Eames himself in his note of March 8, 1856^ 

 to Senor Gutierrez, opposing the cession of Isla de Aves demanded by 

 Holland : 



" The undersigned, in this connection, deems it his duty further to 

 state that he has in his possession a copy of a contract entered into on 

 the 29th of September last, between the government of Venezuela and 

 John F. Pickrell, a citizen of the United States, conveying to the 

 said contractor and his associates certain exclusive privileges in the 

 guano islands of Venezuela, in which contract the undersigned per- 

 ceives that the Island of Aves, in question, is specified under certain 

 conditions and stipulations therein set forth." 



True it is that Mr. Eames, in the same note, March 8, undoubtedly 

 perceiving the force of such confession extorted from him by the truth 

 of the fact, sought to invalidate it by these words : "The undersigned, 

 in view of that reservation, now abstains from giving any manner of 

 sanction to the insertion of the Aves Island in that contract." 



But such declaration is of no use when contrasted with a fixed fact. 

 The whole of the learned world agrees upon this maxim : " Frotestatio 

 contra factum nihil revelat." So that the proof is utterly useless when 

 the fact protested against cannot be supported under any other head 

 than that of renunciation. Facts, says Mr. Troplong, must be stronger 

 than vain words. 



It follows, from what is above set forth in the premises, that Vene- 

 zuela, as the possessor and owner of Isla de Aves, ceded her usufruct 

 thereof to the American citizen, Mr. Wallace, in December, 1854 ; 

 that the United States legation at Caraccas, whether in March, 1855, 

 when officially informed of the claim being presented at Washington 

 by Shelton and associates, or even afterwards, did not transmit to the 

 government of Venezuela any determination on the part of the Ameri- 

 can Cabinet, objecting to the lessees of the guano islands of the repub- 



