No. 92.
Mr. Hall to
Mr. Bayard.
Guatemala, January 30, 1888. (Received February 24.)
Sir: With reference to your instructions, numbered 516, 517, and 525, of the 2d and 5th of November and 9th December, 1887, to my dispatches [Page 122] No. 751 and No. 752, and to the subject of the discriminating duties to which merchant vessels of the United States are subject in the ports of Costa Rica, I have to inform the Department that while recently in Salvador I learned that the steamer Costa Rica, carrying the Costa Rican flag, had touched at Punta Arenas and other Central American ports and at nearly all of them had received cargo for San Francisco.
As I had the honor to report to the Department in my dispatches above mentioned, the Costa Rica Government still maintains a discrimination in favor of the Spanish Central American Line of steamers to which the Costa Rica belongs, to the prejudice of vessels of the United States, and as in your instruction No. 525, relating to the same subject, the wish of the Treasury Department to be informed of any further developments is expressed, I deemed it advisable to inform you of the movements of the steamer referred to, for any action the Treasury Department might be disposed to adopt in regard to the application of section 2502 of the Revised Statutes to the cargo, and accordingly addressed you from San Salvador on the 25th instant a telegram.
This steamer on her return from San Francisco will probably bring cargo for Costa Rica upon which there will be a rebate of 5 per cent, from the regular tariff rates upon imports.
I have, etc.,