VENEZUELA. 



801 



won- treated so generously that they offered no op- 

 position to the mining operations. r i'j u . S iic<-. - 

 these efforts was reflected in the returns of the gold 

 exports, whieli rose from !:>!) ounces in !>- 

 (i.,-) IS ounces in 1886,11.900 ounces in INS?. 14.51(1 

 ounces in 1888. and 14,024 ounces in the first half 

 of 1>- 



In 1893 Mr. Chamberlain contemplated the grant- 

 ing of all the northwest district, extending from the 

 Cuyuni river to the western boundary of the colony, 

 to a chartered company, with absolute right to the 

 minerals and precious stones, timber, railroad, and 

 township rights, as well as leave to sell the conces- 

 sions to public companies. After the appointment 

 of the Boundary Commission the Government of 

 British Guiana ceased granting mining licenses, 

 and the companies already organized for quartz 

 mining suspended operations. 



The Boundary Commission sent Prof. George L. 

 Burr to Holland" to examine Dutch records bearing 

 upon the boundary dispute. The archives of the 

 Vatican were likewise explored, and certified copies 

 of Spanish and Venezuelan documents relating to 

 the subject were obtained. 



The Venezuelan case was presented to the United 

 States Commission by James S. Storrow, counsel for 

 Venezuela, and approved by William L. Scruggs, 

 legal adviser of the Venezuelan Government and 

 special counsel before the Boundary Commission. 

 It was pointed out that the proposal made in 1890 

 by Venezuela for arbitration did not involve the 

 surrender of a province, inhabited by 40.000 British 

 subjects, which had been in the uninterrupted pos- 

 session of Holland and of Great Britain successively 

 for two centuries, which was the objection that 

 Lord Salisbury had raised in 1880 in reference to 

 the claim of Venezuela that the Essequibo river was 

 the boundary, because Venezuela, in asking for 

 arbitration, offered to recognize in Great Britain 

 a right to its settlements on both banks of the 

 Essequibo, reserving for itself the banks of the 

 Orinoco, which the treaty of Aranjuez had recog- 

 nized as Spanish, and every English ministry, ex- 

 cept Lord Salisbury's, had offered so to recognize. 

 The proposal was to arbitrate the rest, consisting of 

 territory where England even then had no settle- 

 ments: but the offer was refused. The settlement 

 of the Dutch and the English had never extended 

 l>eyond the rich alluvial land of the seacoast and 

 the river estuaries. Assuming, for the sake of argu- 

 ment, that England might have a right by occupa- 

 tion wherever its people had their settled homes 

 but for a single generation, the contention of the 

 Venezuelan brief was that there was no title by 

 occupation to 40.000 square miles in which neither 

 the Dutch nor the English ever had a settlement. 

 The Spanish discovered Guiana in 1500. and soon 

 e-tablished themselves so strongly that no other 

 power was ever able to penetrate inland beyond the 

 reach of its ship's guns, not even the formidable 

 Raleigh expeditions of 1595 and 1616. The earliest 

 Dutch attempt at settlement occurred not before 

 1621. previous to which ships only touched for 

 trade near the mouth of the Essequibo. where the 

 Spaniards already had a fort. Neither the Dutch 

 nor the English later attempted to have any settle- 

 ment in the basin of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni 

 above their lower cataracts, nor on the Essequibo 

 above its lowest cataracts, nor in the coast region 

 west of the Poineroon. but confined their occupa- 

 tion to the fertile alluvial tide-water districts. The 

 temporary Dutch post alleged to have existed in 

 the Cuyuni basin and the more doubtful one at 

 Barima Point were at most mere shops for friendly 

 trade with the older settlements of the Spaniards. 

 When two posts established in the same regions be- 

 tween 1753 and 1770. temporary huts chiefly, if not 

 VOL. xxxvi. 51 A 



entirely, fi.r slave raids on the Spani-h Indian-, the 

 Spaniards sent expeditions against n as 



it was discovered and 



away the occupant- \\liile tin- 



occupants of the cither ex-aped. The Spaniards 

 a-seried their right to do ihi- ,,n the ground od 

 ritorial sovereignty. The- mplained 



to the King of Spain, but they g.,t IK, r.-dre. and 

 never afterward renewed their claim. It i- upon 

 these acts of attempted occupation, if tie 

 dignified by that name, that the Hii-li-h li.-m- I 

 their claim to the gold regions ol tin- southern part 

 of the Cuyuni basin and of the I Sara ma and I'.arima 

 rivers, and the still more monstrous claim to hold 

 the mouth of the Orinoco, whose entire l>a-ii, 

 always been held by Spain and it- - The 



actual settlements of the Dutch and the Spaniards 

 were separated by 150 miles of forest, in which no 

 white man lived! The whole of the basin of the 

 Cuyuni and Mazaruni is claimed as Venezuelan 

 territory on the principle that first occupation of a 

 part is in law an entry upon and possession of the 

 whole, which the entry of a second claimant can 

 not displace beyond the actual occupation of that 

 second. The British claim is therefore limited to 

 their settled districts and can not reach the ultra- 

 settlement region. After the first discovery of the 

 northeastern coast of South America by the Span- 

 ish, their explorers coasted the whole of Guiana and 

 sailed up the Orinoco, and in consequence of their 

 stories of gold more than a score of Spanish expe- 

 ditions penetrated Guiana in search of it. 



The Spaniards settled on the lower Orinoco at 

 San Thome because it was the entrance to the in- 

 terior, and by holding it they kept all other coiners 

 out. Freebooters of other nations attacked the 

 Spanish settlements with the design of effecting a 

 lodgment and gaining access to the gold region, 

 but Spain possessed the land so strongly as to hold 

 it against them all. The Spaniards reached toward 

 the interior not merely with their expeditions, but 

 with their civil settlements and their extensive mis- 

 sion villages. This was done so thoroughly, and by 

 Spaniards alone, that these vast regions are to-day 

 pervaded with the Spanish language, names, re- 

 ligion, and habits, having received no European 

 civilization from any nation except from Spain. 

 The Dutch \vho settled on the estuary of the Esse- 

 quibo were barely strong enough to live. Their 

 colony consisted in 1735 of only 150 whites and 

 3,000 negroes, and all their cultivation and use of 

 the soil and all their houses west of the Essequibo 

 were within 3 miles of the coast, not reaching 

 to the Pomeroon river, and 5 or 10 miles up the 

 banks of the Essequibo, the Cuyuni, and the Maza- 

 runi, above their confluence, but below their lowest 

 cataracts and on tide water. The English extended 

 substantially no farther. They now assert a right 

 150 miles beyond any actual Dutch occupation. 

 The main basin of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni is a 

 true interior basin, shaped like a tray with a rim. 

 and tipped so as to throw all its waters to the 

 ern corner, where they escape through what is virtu- 

 ally a single breach in its rim. and pour as one 

 stream into the Essequibo estuary by a series of 

 rapids and cataracts, with a drop of 200 feet in 40 

 miles. The difficulty of penetrating this basin is 

 such that a single blockhouse placed in the gorge 

 was sufficient to protect the settlements against in- 

 cursions from the interior and to prevent the escape 

 of runaway slaves from the plantations. The moun- 

 tainous ridge forming the rim of the basin consti- 

 tuted for two hundred and fifty years an absolute 

 barrier to the spread of the Dutch and English 

 settlements and forms a natural boundary, such as 

 is recognized in international law. The natural 

 entrance to the basin has alwavs been from the 



