No. 492.
Señor de
Zamacona to Mr. Evarts.
Washington, March 10, 1880.
Mr. Secretary: I have until now been prevented from answering the note which your Department was pleased to address me on the 1st instant, both by my absence from this capital in the early part of the month and by illness since my return.
I am very much gratified to see by that note and by the inclosure which accompanied it that the President has seen fit to declare no longer in force the instructions given to General Ord in June, 1877, authorizing him, in certain cases, to pursue Indians and thieves beyond the frontier.
The opinion formed by my government in relation to that authorization and its endeavors to secure its revocation will enable your Department to realize with what satisfaction the note to which I am now replying, and which I have already transmitted to our department of foreign relations, will be received in Mexico. That note dispels the only shadow that darkened the northern horizon of our republic, and it will raise to its full height the feeling of mutual confidence which has for some time past been developing between the people of Mexico and those of the United States, and which is so much needed, in order that business transactions of importance and enterprizes of common utility may be fostered between the two nations.
The reasons which, as your Department informs me, have induced the President to revoke General Ord’s instructions concerning the pursuit [Page 783] of thieves and savages across the frontier cannot fail to be flattering to my government, inasmuch as they show that the government of this republic has appreciated the earnest and efficient zeal with which the Mexican troops and the inhabitants of our frontier States have been fighting against brigandage and barbarism on the confines of the two countries; and that it has appreciated also the spirit of cordiality and harmony by which our national administration is actuated in its relations with the United States. The reciprocity in this feeling, of which this legation has just received conclusive evidence, is an earnest of abundant fruit for the interests which connect in common both our republics.
I must express the most profound conviction that the measure of which I have been informed by your Department will have a very beneficial influence, even upon the situation of the frontier districts, since national sensitiveness will no longer be an obstacle to perfect harmony or to the united action of the civil authorities and the military officers on both sides of the line.
Be pleased, Mr. Secretary, to convey to the President, together with my most sincere respects, the expression of the gratification that has been afforded me by his opinion touching the conduct of the Mexican Government on the frontier, which opinion has found so kindly an interpreter in you.
I have, &c.,