400 



ADDENDUM. 



who lost his brother of yellow fever at Para, and who finally had the 

 ship in which he had taken passage to England, with all his collections, 

 burned under him on the broad Atlantic. 



He cannot be supposed to have seen things " couleur de rose," or to 

 be a witness with a favorable bias ; and I quote him in order to support 

 my own opinion that the climate is good, the country generally 

 healthy, and that few who undertake to settle there will be willing to 

 come away. 



With the fact before us that many persons have gone even by the 

 tedious, difficult, and dangerous passes of the Cordillera, to settle in the 

 Amazonian basin, and that, to my personal knowledge, many more are 

 desirous to go, the action of the Brazilian government in closing the 

 lower waters of that river, and forbidding access, at least for any pur- 

 poses of trade or exploration, to the countries drained by the tributaries 

 • of the Amazon belonging to the Spanish American republics, becomes 



a matter of grave importance to the world at large, and induces a dis- 

 position to scrutinize with severity her right to do so. 



I have too little acquaintance with the "jus gentium" to attempt to 

 argue the question ; nor is it my province to do so ; but I believe it to 

 be clearly my duty to place all the facts and circumstances of the case 

 before this government and people, that they may take the matter into 

 consideration, and judge for themselves. 



My own opinion is, that Brazil herself doubted this right, or else 

 why should she have sent ambassadors to the Spanish American re- 

 publics for the purpose of making exclusive treaties of navigation with 

 them ? She did not need these treaties, for I know that her vessels 

 passed freely, enjoying, without let or hinderance, all the privileges that 

 treaty could give, and traded upon any tributaries of the Amazon where 

 they pleased, and that Peru and Bolivia were glad to have them do 

 this, though she denied the same privileges to them on the Brazilian 

 Amazon. Indeed, a writer in the government paper at Rio de Janeiro, 

 and one apparently who "spoke by the card," declared that the principal 

 object in these treaties was the keeping of the "pirate Yankees" out of 

 the Amazon. Let us see how they succeeded. The Chevalier Da Ponte 

 Eibeiro was sent by the Emperor to Lima for the purpose of making the 

 treaty with Peru. He was an able and astute negotiator, but, unfor- 

 tunately for his object, he had the hawk-eye of the best-trained, most 

 experienced, and probably in an official sense, ablest diplomat of the 

 United States upon him. Clay threw no obstacles in his way ; he per- 

 mitted him to make his treaty, (by which Peru gave to Brazil the right 

 to navigate her interior waters,) and then immediately demanded of 



