512 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[March, 
would appear, i that the act was not performed in behalf of the 
Argentine Republic, but for the government of Buenos Ayres. 
If Don David Jewett took possession under a salute, from 
whence came the guns ? Vernet says he landed them. If so, 
they must have been taken from a vessel — why is the name of 
the vessel suppressed ? 
We have some recollection of having heard of a vessel called the 
Heroine, which, in some publication of Governor Vernet, was digni- 
fied by the name and style of the national corvette Heroine. This 
vessel sailed from Buenos Ayres in eighteen hundred and twenty, 
and in the same year visited the Falkland Islands, being under 
the command of one David Jewett. She was unfortunate — hav- 
ing been captured, by the Portuguese frigate Perola, off Cape 
Spartel, on the twentieth of March, eighteen hundred and twenty- 
two, — the kingdom of Portugal and the Argentine Republic, as 
to each other, then being in a state of profound peace. Notwith- 
standing, the Heroine was condemned in the court of admiralty 
at Lisbon, as a lawful prize to the captors, her officers and crew 
having been found gviilty of many aggravated acts of piracy. 
Jewett was not the commander at the time of the capture.* Did 
he abandon her at the Falklands ? Was the phmder of the first 
cruise shared there 1 If the Heroine was a national corvette, 
the national loss was greater in amount than the damages done 
Vernet's colony by Captain Duncan. We have heard of no rec- 
lamations — no denunciations of the Portuguese for this " Vandal" 
outrage on the Argentine flag: this capture of "a national cor- 
vette," in a period of profound peace : — this seizure of the very 
guns which (if it was the vessel commanded by David Jewett) 
had solemnized the great act by which a nation proclaimed her 
sovereignty over a great region. If the David Jewett, Coronel de 
Marina of Vernet, are identical, there would seem to be a won- 
derful congruity in all things relating to this celebrated settle- 
ment. A symmetry, fitness, and adaptation of parts, disclosing 
the perfection of the original design. The guns of a pirate an- 
nounced the sovereign rights of the — Argentine Republic ! The 
ceremonies might have been rendered more appropriate and ex- 
act, by burying a chest of money with its usual accompaniments ! 
* She was then under command of one Mason, an Englishman, who took 
charge of her at the Falkland Islands. 
