AS VENEZUELA COMMISSIONER-1895-1896 119 



the boundary was appointed and began its work in Wash 

 ington, the commissioners being, in the order named by 

 the President, David J. Brewer of Kansas, a justice of the 

 Supreme Court of the United States ; Chief Justice Alvey 

 of the District of Columbia; Andrew D. White of New 

 York ; F. E. Coudert, an eminent member of the New York 

 bar; and Daniel C. Gilman of Maryland, President of 

 Johns Hopkins University. 



On our arrival in Washington there was much discour 

 agement among us. We found ourselves in a jungle of ge 

 ographical and legal questions, with no clue in sight leading 

 anywhither. The rights of Great Britain had been derived, 

 in 1815, from the Netherlands ; the rights of Venezuela had 

 been derived, about 1820, from Spain; but to find the 

 boundary separating the two in that vast territory, mainly 

 unsettled, between the Orinoco and the Essequibo rivers, 

 seemed impossible. 



The original rights of the Netherlands had been derived 

 from Spain by the treaty of Minister in 1648 ; and on ex 

 amining that enormous document, which settled weighty 

 questions in various parts of the world, after the life-and- 

 death struggle, religious, political, and military, which 

 had gone on for nearly eighty years, one little clause ar 

 rested our attention: that, namely, in which the Span 

 iards, despite their bitter hatred of the Dutch, agreed that 

 the latter might carry on warlike operations against t cer 

 tain other people &quot; with reference to territorial rights in 

 America. These &quot;certain other people&quot; were not pre 

 cisely indicated; and we hoped, by finding who they 

 were, to get a clue to the fundamental facts of the case. 

 Straightway two of our three lawyers, Mr. Justice Brewer 

 and Mr. Coudert, grappled on this question, one of them 

 taking the ground that these &quot;other people &quot; referred to 

 were the Caribbean Indians who had lived just south of 

 the mouth of the Orinoco, and had been friendly to the 

 Dutch but implacable toward the Spaniards, and that their 

 territory was to be considered as virtually Dutch, and, 

 therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the 



