VENEZUELA. 



845 





trated his forces for the defense of the capital, 

 which was practically besieged by the insurgents 

 advancing from Valencia and Victoria, while 

 another division moved on La Guayra for the 

 purpose of preventing the President's escape. 

 President Andrade sent an envoy to the revolu- 

 tionary leader, offering to resign so as to allow 

 the peaceful election of Gen. Castro, thus averting 

 a military dictatorship. Negotiations were sus- 

 pended, then resumed, and after two weeks of par- 

 leying, Gen. Castro sent an ultimatum, which was 

 accepted. Gen. Andrade did not wait to trans- 

 fer the executive authority to Gen. Castro, but 

 fled to La Guayra before the entry of the latter 

 into Caracas on Oct. 21. Several members of his 

 Cabinet and others of his adherents preceded him 

 in his flight. Before departing the President dis- 

 banded the Government troops, except a selected 

 force which he took with him to La Guayra, and 

 embarked on the Government gunboats and 

 transport. Gen. Castro as acting President re- 

 quested the foreign diplomatic representatives to 

 take measures to prevent Gen. Andrade from leav- 

 ing La Guayra with naval vessels and a large 

 supply of ammunition. The United States min- 

 ister, to whom as dean of the diplomatic corps the 

 request was preferred, declined to interfere. The 

 fleet sailed for Maracaibo on the same day that 

 the revolutionists entered Caracas. 



Gen. Castro was invested with power as pro- 

 visional President by Congress, and on Oct. 23 

 appointed a Cabinet as follows: Minister of the 

 Interior, Francisco Castillo; Minister of Foreign 

 Affairs, Anduego Palacio; Minister of Finance* 

 Tello Mendoza; Minister of War, Gen. Ignacio 

 Pulido; Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and 

 Commerce, Manuel Hernandez; Minister of Public 

 Works, Victor Rodriguez; Minister of Public In- 

 struction, Clemente Urbaneja. Gen. de Barri ar- 

 rived in Maracaibo on Dec. 1 to establish the au- 

 thority of the provisional Government. The 

 naval vessels demanded his surrender from the 

 American steamer on which he came, but the cap- 

 tain refused to give him up. The adherents of the 

 new Government rose in arms as soon as Gen. de 

 Barri gave the signal, and attacked the custom- 

 house. The opposing troops, strengthened with 

 the crews of the gunboats, resisted through the 

 night and the next morning, but finally surren- 

 dered the customhouse and threw down their 

 arms. 



Anglo-Venezuelan Boundary Arbitration. 

 The tribunal appointed, under the treaty signed 

 at Washington on Feb. 2, 1897, to arbitrate in the 

 matter of the disputed boundary between Vene- 

 zuela and British Guiana met formally in Paris on 

 Jan. 25, 1899, and then separated, to resume its 

 sittings on June 15. The arbitrators named in 

 the treaty were Chief-Justice Melville W. Fuller 

 and Justice David Brewer of the United States 

 Supreme Court, and Lord Herschell and Justice 

 Sir Richard Henn Collins, British jurists. The 

 president of the tribunal was to be selected by 

 these arbitrators or, in case of disagreement, by 

 the King of Sweden and Norway. The jurist 

 selected by the arbitrators was Prof. Frederick 

 Martens, of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Af- 

 fairs. Lord Herschell having died, Lord Russell 

 of Killowen, the Lord Chief Justice of England, 

 was chosen to take his place as a British arbitrator. 

 The Venezuelan and British cases, with support- 

 ing documents and the counter-cases and printed 

 arguments on both sides, were laid before the 

 tribunal, filling 23 volumes. The oral arguments 

 were presented by ex-President Benjamin Harri- 

 son, assisted by Benjamin F. Tracy, Severo Mal- 

 let Provost, and James Russell Soley in behalf of 



Venezuela, and by Sir Richard Webster, Attorney- 

 General of England, assisted by Sir Robert Reid 

 and G. R. Askvvith, as junior counsel for Great 

 Britain. 



The Venezuelan Government contended that an 

 original title to the whole of Guiana, the region 

 bounded by the Orinoco, the A ma/on, and the 

 Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea was estab- 

 lished by Spain by virtue of discovery, explora- 

 tion, formal proclamation of sovereignty, and oc- 

 cupation and by the recognition of the Spanish 

 claim to the New World in the papal bull of 1493. 

 Columbus sighted the coast of Guiana near the 

 mouth of the Orinoco in 1498, and subsequent 

 explorers ascended the Amazon and the Orinoco 

 and passed from one to the other through the 

 channel of the Cassiquiari connecting their upper 

 waters, thus circumnavigating the region that 

 came to be known as the island of Guiana. Set- 

 tlements that Spaniards attempted to establish 

 on the coast were destroyed by the Caribs until 

 Berrio, in 1592, in search" of El Dorado, the gold 

 field of the Incas that was believed to exist in 

 Guiana, penetrated from Granada to the Orinoco 

 and descended it to Trinidad. On this island a 

 Spanish post was established, and on the Orinoco 

 the town of Santo Thome. The Dutch, who re- 

 volted from Spain in 1581, visited the Guiana 

 coast for trading and employed the Caribs to war 

 upon the Spanish settlements. In 1626 the Dutch 

 West India Company was chartered, and it estab- 

 lished a trading post at Kijkoveral, an island in 

 the Essequibo river. In 1648 the treaty of Miin- 

 ster recognized the right of the Dutch to trade 

 and to possess the places they then held in 

 Guiana, which was only the station of Kijkoveral 

 and nothing in the country to the west of the 

 Essequibo, which was recognized as Spanish ter- 

 ritory according to the Venezuelan version of the 

 treaty. 



The British view rejected this interpretation 

 as well as the Spanish prior title founded on dis- 

 covery, and claimed that the Dutch had the same 

 right to extend from Kijkoveral that the Span- 

 iards had to extend from Santo Thome. The 

 Dutch did extend their occupation up the delta 

 of the Essequibo as far as the falls of the Mas- 

 saroony and the Cuyuni and westward along the 

 coast to the Pomeroon and Maruka rivers. The 

 Spanish Capuchin friars established missions 

 south of the Orinoco, which were gradually ex- 

 tended until they approached the Cuyuni, on the 

 bank of which the authorities of Santo Thome 

 built a fort to protect these missions from the 

 Caribs. Dutch traders penetrated the upper 

 valley of the Cuyuni to buy horses from the mis- 

 sion Indians. They also made their way along 

 an inland water way connecting the Essequibo 

 with the rivers flowing into the estuary of the 

 Orinoco. The Caribs were aided by the Dutch in 

 their wars against the Spanish, and received sub- 

 sidies for catching and returning runaway negro 

 slaves from the Dutch plantations. Dutch slave 

 raiders traversed the wild regions of the interior, 

 and Dutch outlaws settled in the Barima dis- 

 trict, which acquired importance in the Venezue- 

 lan controversy from the fact that it dominates 

 the principal mouth of the Orinoco. The Span- 

 iards sent expeditions to break up Dutch settle- 

 ments on the Cuyuni and along the coast from 

 Barima as far eastward as the mouth of the 

 Maruka; otherwise, they exercised no authority 

 nor did they make settlements in the country 

 south of the Orinoco except in the open savan- 

 na, where the mission stations were. The Dutch 

 authorities disclaimed jurisdiction beyond the 

 Maruka. The Spanish authorities disavowed 



