652 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



but the fact of its being Sunday and the law and custom among 

 themselves regarding it prompted them to demand that the seines 

 should be withdrawn. 



6. It is shown by the evidence of all those witnesses present at the 

 time when the Americans were remonstrated with, and told to take 

 their seines up prior to any serious steps being taken, and it is also 

 distinctly proved that no violence was resorted to until after the 

 exasperating conduct of Captain Jacobs, the American master of a 

 schooner concerned in this illegal fishing, who threatened them with 

 a revolver if they prevented him or interfered with his seine. 



7. It does not appear that the native fishermen were aware of the 

 illegality of hauling a seine in the month of January. It is, there- 

 fore, to be presumed that the Americans were also ignorant of that 

 law, although their ignorance can not exonerate them from the 

 breach, nor does it exonerate John Hickey, an Englishman, who is 

 charged with the same offense, and whom it is iny intention to 

 summon before me to answer to that charge. 



8. The statement of the Americans that they were compelled to 

 leave the harbor and leave off fishing is entirely without foundation, 

 which is proved by the evidence of those examined before me, among 

 whom was Mr. Snellgrove, collector of customs, who was there a 

 week after the occurrence, and communicated with them, and by the 

 evidence of others to the effect that they remained for about a fort- 

 night or more " until the herring slacked," and, with respect to their 

 loss of the haul of herring by the seine being emptied, the fish were 

 not their lawful property, having been illegally caught. 



In support of this view of the conduct of the Americans, I am not 

 only borne out by the evidence of the Fortune Bay fishermen, who 

 made their statements in a remarkably frank and straightforward 

 manner, but by the self-conflicting evidence of those very Americans 

 themselves, whose depositions given on oath show them to have been 

 illegally fishing, and who were liable thereby to the forfeiture of their 

 seines, nets, &c., by chap. 102, section 12, of the consolidated statutes. 



GEORGE L. SULIVAN, 

 Captain and Senior Officer. 



Mr. Evarts to Mr. Welsh. 



No. 150.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 



Washington, September %8, 1878. 



SIR: I received in due course your dispatch of August 24 ultimo, 

 inclosing Lord Salisbury's reply of the British Government to the 

 representations that had been made to it as early as March last by 

 you, under instructions from the Department. 



I must understand Lord Salisbury's note, accompanying the copy 

 of Captain Sulivan's report, which he communicates to this govern- 

 ment, as adopting that naval officer's conclusions of fact respecting 

 the violent injuries which our fishing-fleet suffered at the hands of the 



