846 



VENEZUELA. 



likewise all responsibility for the Barima dis- 

 trict, which became the Alsatia of Spanish and 

 Dutch outlaws and runaway slaves, and the base 

 of operations for French buccaneers and Dutch 

 expeditions designed to wrest from the Spaniards 

 the gateway to El Dorado. 



In 1810 the republic of Venezuela gained its 

 independence and succeeded to the rights of Spain 

 in Guiana, and in 1814 the Dutch colony of Esse- 

 quibo, with Demerara and Berbice, was ceded to 

 Great Britain. In 1841 Robert Schomburgk was 

 employed by the British Government to survey 

 the boundary. He drew a line based partly on 

 certain old maps and certain ruins and other evi- 

 dences of former white occupation which he as- 

 sumed to have been Dutch, though the ruins at 

 Point Barima were probably those of a French 

 fort, partly on the geographical configuration of 

 the country (see map in Annual Cyclopaedia for 

 1895, page 740). In his report he extolled the 

 value to Great Britain of Point Barima as con- 

 trolling the only entrance to the Orinoco that was 

 navigable by large vessels. He erected boundary 

 marks at the mouths of the Barima and Amacura 

 rivers, and British officials appeared at Point 

 Barima, creating intense excitement in Venezuela, 

 and drawing from the Venezuelan Government a 

 remonstrance, in consequence of which the Brit- 

 ish Government caused the boundary posts to be 

 removed, explaining that they were not intended 

 to indicate possession. Schomburgk's revised 

 map, completed after the survey, made the pro- 

 posed boundary run along the crest of the Imataca 

 mountains, giving to Great Britain the whole of 

 the Cuyuni river and its tributaries, whereas his 

 first line, the one that was communicated to the 

 Venezuelan Government and made public, crossed 

 the Barima, the Barama, the Cuyuni, and the 

 Massaroony midway in their course. 



The Venezuelan claim embraced all territory 

 west of Essequibo river except the coast district 

 from the Maruka to the Essequibo and thejands 

 along the left bank of the Essequibo and on the 

 lower course of the Cuyuni and the Massaroony 

 which could be claimed by England by prescrip- 

 tive right derived from Dutch settlement in tin- 

 last century. The British extreme claim em- 

 braced the whole basin of the Essequibo and Cu- 

 yuni, reaching almost to the Orinoco and the Ca- 

 roni, and the whole seacoast up to and including 

 Point Barima, with the drainage basins of the 

 Barima and Waini.. This was the claim made by 

 Lord Salisbury that led to the rupture of diplo- 

 matic relations by Venezuela when preparations 

 were made to take possession of Barima in 1880. 

 The British Government adhered to Schom- 

 burgk's capricious line, as the Venezuelans de- 

 scribed it, the one published in 1841, except when 

 Lord Aberdeen in 1844 and Lord Granville in 1881 

 offered slight concessions to Venezuela to end the 

 dispute. In 1850 the two governments agreed mu- 

 tually, in an interchange of notes, that they 

 would not encroach on the disputed territory 

 until the boundary should be settled. When the 

 Venezuelan Government granted some forest 

 lands to an American company, part of which 

 Great Britain asserted lay within the disputed 

 territory, the latter asserted that this was a 

 breach of the agreement. 



On the discovery of gold in the Yuruari and 

 Yuruan districts of the upper Cuyuni valley, 

 miners from British Guiana flocked into the coun- 

 try, and the British Government announced the 

 intention of exercising jurisdiction up to the 

 Imataca mountains and the Amacura river. Lord 

 Salisbury brought forth a later boundary drawn 

 by Schomburgk as the final result of his sur- 



vey, which made the whole basin of the Cuyuni 

 British territory. When informal m-^otial ions 

 were opened in 187(5 \ "ene/uela agreed to accept 

 the line of the Maruka river and the upper 

 Cuyuni proposed by Lord Aberdeen in 1st I. Lord 

 Granville claimed a large extent of territory to 

 the north of it on the coast, and in ISsl oil'cred 

 a lino, starting not far from the mouth of the 

 Waini. When Venezuela reopened the question 

 of arbitration in 1887, after the discoveries "t 

 gold, Lord Salisbury refused to arbitrate any- 

 thing east of the Schomburgk line. The second 

 Schomburgk line, before that kept secret, was 

 then communicated to the Venezuelan Govern- 

 ment, and in 1889 the Barima was declared Brit- 

 ish territory, and British posts were established 

 in the Yuruan and Yuruari gold fields. In ls!t.~> 

 President Cleveland announced that the tradi- 

 tional and established policy of the United > 

 Government was opposed to extension of the po-- 

 sessions of any European power on the American 

 continent. When the British Government, in re- 

 ply, declined to accept the Monroe doctrine. In- 

 proposed to C'on^re-- in a mes-a^e. and ('on 

 agreed on Jan. '2, 1S1M5, to appoint a conmii--ion 

 to determine what the true boundary i- between 

 Venezuela and British Guiana. He declared in 

 his message that it would l>e the duty of the 

 I'nited State- t.i iv-i-t the appropriation by Gn-at 

 Britain of lands or the e\erei-e of jurisdiction 

 over territory \vhidi of ri^ht belongs to \die- 

 x.uela. a- a \\illful a^-jre--ion upon it- o\\ n ri^lil-. 

 The American coniiiii--ion. con-i-tin^ of .lu-tice 

 Da\id -I. Brewer. Iliehard 11. Alvev. Andrew I). 

 White. Fre.lcric K. Coudert. and Daniel C. Gil- 

 man, took much testimony, but made no report. 

 because the Briti-h Government in the meantime 

 reconsidered it- po-ition and agreed to arbitrate. 



The r.riti-h claim presented to the tribunal did 

 not include the \\hole region in the interior to 

 which Lord Salisbury had laid claim, but \\as 

 nearly the same as tlie one that Lord I'almei-ton 

 advanced in ls.~>(. following the earlier Schom- 

 burgk line. The Yene/iielan Government ad- 

 hered to it- position that the K--equibo wa- the 

 political boundary indicated in the treaty of 

 Minister and never altered by any legal act. The 

 territory in dispute had an extent of nearly tio.- 

 000 square mi' 



The coiin-el for Vene/.nela were not prepared 

 to prove any acts of sovereignty or evidence of oc- 

 eupation on the part of Yene/uda within the di-- 

 puted territory, because they under-tood that the 

 fifty-year prescription reserved by Great Britain 

 in the treaty of arbitration applied to the period 

 antedating the ce--ion of British Guiana to Great 

 Britain, and that nothing that occurred subse- 

 quent to 1814 could be taken into account. The 

 British coun-el made it clear that the fifty 

 of continuous posse ion in-i-ted upon in th< 

 respondcnce and stipulated in the treaty \\ere 

 those running back from 1S97, the date of the 

 treaty. The American counsel being convinced 

 of this, did not urge the point. 



The unanimous award of the arbitrators 

 delivered on Oct. 3. The boundary line between 

 the colony of Briti-h Guiana and the I'nited 

 States of Venezuela wa> determined a- follows: 



Starting from the coast at Point Playa. 1 1n- 

 line of boundary -hall run in a straight line to 

 the river Barima at its junction with the river 

 Murnma. and thence along the midstream of the 

 latter river to its source, and from that point to 

 the junction of the river llaiowa with the Ama- 

 cura, and thence along the midstream of the 

 Amacura to its source in the Imataca ridge, and 

 thence in a southwesterly direction along the 



