The commission appointed by the President of the United States, the
objects of which were described in detail by your excellency in your
note of the 3d of February, received from Her Majesty’s Government,
through your excellency, the information which had, at that time, been
collected for presentation to Parliament.
Her Majesty’s Government will shortly be in a position to present further
papers in elucidation of the subject, and I will have great pleasure in
forwarding to you advanced copies as soon as they are printed. I believe
that you will find in them not only the particular Hague records to
which attention is directed in Mr. Justice Brewer’s letter, but all the
other records of a similar character referred to in the British
preliminary statement.
If, on the examination of the forthcoming Blue Book, it shall appear that
there are any other documents in regard to which information is desired,
Her Majesty’s Government will be glad to render any assistance in their
power toward furnishing such information.
Her Majesty’s Government are glad to learn that Professor Burr is about
to make an examination of the archives at The Hague, and will be happy
to place at his disposal all the information they can give, with a view
to assisting his researches.
I inclose a memorandum by Her Majesty’s attorney general, who is advising
Her Majesty’s Government in this question, containing some further
information and observations on the points raised in Mr. Justice
Brewer’s letter.
[Inclosure.]
Memorandum.
The omission to print The Hague records in the appendix to the Blue
Book Venezuela No. 1, of 1896, was due to pressure of time and to
the mass of documents which had to be examined and translated.
The three documents to which reference is made in Mr. Justice
Brewer’s letter of the 6th of May, 1896, inclosed in Mr. Olney’s
dispatch of the 8th of May, viz, (1) the document in the “Hague
records” referred to in the “preliminary statement” at page 9 of the
above-mentioned Blue Book, under date 1684, respecting the
establishment of a post at Barima; (2) the document referred to at
page 12, under date 1757, reporting complaints by the Spanish
commandant to the Dutch authorities as to disorders at Barima; and
(3) the memorial referred to at page 13, under date 1764, will all
he found printed in the appendix to the Blue Book which is now in
course of preparation and which will shortly he issued and placed at
the disposal of the United States Government.
All the other Hague records referred to or cited in the preliminary
statement will also be printed in the same Blue Book, and they will
ho accompanied by a large number of other Dutch and Spanish
documents corroborating and confirming the facts brought forward in
the preliminary statement.
As regards the observation made in Mr. Justice Brewer’s letter that
the claim that Dutch Guiana extended to Point Barima finds no
recognition, as far as the commission have yet ascertained, in the
works of the standard historians of the colony, either English or
Dutch, this is not the place for an exhaustive examination of the
views of historians. But upon this particular point, to which
attention is called, the opinions of two modern historians quoted in
the letter can scarcely he regarded as sufficient to rebut the facts
advanced in the British statement, supported by the documents
already or now about to be published and confirmed by historians who
wrote at far earlier dates, and with full opportunity of knowing the
real circumstances.
The statement quoted from the work of General Netscher that there is
nothing in the Dutch archives to support the British contention must
have been made with an imperfect knowledge of those documents. It
will be found on examination that the original Dutch archives
undoubtedly corroborate the British contention. The fact that at
various dates, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the
seventeenth centuries, the Dutch had occupied the territory in the
neighborhood of Barima is completely established by the contemporary
documents, both Dutch and Spanish.
Whether Barima was abandoned by the Dutch is a question which can
only be satisfactorily dealt with upon a review of the whole history
of the Dutch proceedings in regard to that place. In the opinion of
Her Majesty’s Government, there is certainly no sufficient evidence
to warrant the statement that either the Dutch or the British
abandoned it, still less that it was ever occupied by the Spaniards.
As regards the citation from Mr. Rodway’s history, it is sufficient
to refer to Mr. Rodway’s own summary of the question of boundary at
page 168 of the third volume. He there says:
“Of all the native tribes in tropical America, the Caribs were the
most powerful. Notwithstanding the reports of its riches, which led
to a number of expeditions in search of the golden city of Manoa
d’Eldorado, Spain never obtained a footing in Guiana. On every
occasion when an attempt was made, the intruders were driven out, so
that for nearly a century the country was preserved intact. Then
came the first Dutch traders, who proclaimed themselves enemies to
Spain, and friends of the Caribs, with the result that small
settlements were permitted in several places. Then, as the trade
became of more importance, posts were established in the interior,
and the whole country, from the Essequibo to the Orinoco, was opened
to the Dutchman, though effectually closed to the Spaniard. It may
be safely stated that if such a condition of things existed to-day
in any part of Africa, the country would be considered as virtually
belonging to the trading nation. By and by, as the trading stations
became colonies, the Commandeurs Essequibo became arbitrators in
disputes among the native tribes, and later again the Indians of the
northwest, from the rivers Barima to the Pomeroon, and of the
interior received annual presents in consideration of assistance in
capturing runaway slaves and putting down disturbances. They were
therefore in the position of protected native races, and it may be
confidently affirmed that, although a Spaniard could not at that
time safely travel in any part of Guiana, the Dutch, on the other
hand, were free of the whole country.
“We have shown in former chapters that Spain disputed the right of
Essequibo to hunt slaves at the mouth of the Orinoco, but we do not
find that any serious quarrel resulted. About the middle of the
seventeenth century there was a Dutch outpost at the mouth of the
Barima, where a slave market of the Caribs was held. It was
abandoned in the year 1680, probably because it did not pay, but
certainly not from [Page 246] fear of
the Spaniards; in fact, it was intimately connected with the
Pomeroon colony, and when that failed the Barima post was
necessarily given up.”
The following citations from leading works on the subject of Guiana
(to which others might he added) is sufficient to show that the
testimony of standard historians and writers corroborates the
British view of the facts:
Hartsinck, in his Beschriving van Guiana, published at Amsterdam in
1770 (vol. 1, p. 146), states:
“As we have before mentioned, Guyana maybe now conveniently divided
into four parts, as regards the present possessions established
there by the European powers, viz:
- “I. Into Spanish Guyana, lying on both sides of the banks
of the River Orinoco, extending westward as far as the Rio
Negro and to the south as far as the River Barima, which is
situated in 8° 5ʹ north latitude and discharges itself into
the mouth of the Orinoco, or, according to others,
stretching to the east of the River Waimy, or Wainy, about 5
miles east of the Orinoco, the which serves as the southern
boundary of Spanish and Dutch Guyana.
- “II. Into Dutch Guyana, extending from Spanish as far as
French Guyana; but as the boundary line between Dutch and
French Guyana, it is a matter of dispute between the Dutch
and the French whether the same should commence from the
River Sinamari, lying about 5° 32ʹ, or from the River
Marowine, in about 5° 50ʹ, the which dispute we shall
consider more at length under the head of Surinam.”
At page 257 of the same volume he states:
“Some bound Dutch Guiana on the west by the River Barima, which lies
in 8° 5ʹ north latitude and discharges itself into the mouth of the
Orinoco; others consider it as bounded on the west by the River
Wayne, lying about 4 miles east of the Orinoco.
“The first rivers found in Dutch Guyana as we proceed (in a
southeasterly direction) from the Orinoco, are the Barima, about 1
mile wide, where we (the Dutch) formerly had a fort; 3 miles
further, the Amacura, of the same width, and which, as well as the
before-mentioned one, discharges itself into the Orinoco; full 3
miles to the eastward, the Moco Moco; not 2 miles further, the River
Waine, three-fourths of a mile wide, but shallow.”
Rolt, in his History of South America, published in London, 1756 (p.
500), writes:
“I. Dutch Guiana extends along the coast, from the mouth of the River
Oroonoko, in 9° of north latitude, to the River Maroni, where the
English formerly built a little fort, in 6° 20ʹ of north
latitude.”
Pestal, in his Commantarii de Republica Batava (published at Leyden,
1795), vol. 1, p. 177, says:
“From Spanish Guiana, the frontier of Dutch Guiana, looking
southward, is divided by the River Barima, which flows into the
Orinoco, or, according to other opinions, by the more easterly River
Wainy.”
Baron Alexander de Humboldt, in his Personal Narrative of Travels to
the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the years
1799–1804, states as follows (English edition published in London,
1826, vol. 6, p. 162):
“The limits of Spanish Guayana on the north and west are, first, the
Oroonoko from Cape Barima to San Fernando de Atababo, and then a
line stretching from north to south from San Fernando towards a
point 15 leagues west of the little fort of San Carlos. The line
crosses the Rio Negro a little above Maroa. The northeast frontier,
that of the English Guyana, merits the greatest attention on account
of the political importance of the mouths of the Oroonoko, which I
have discussed in the twenty-fourth chapter of this work. The sugar
and cotton plantations had already reached beyond the Rio Pomaroun
under the Dutch Government. They extend farther than the mouth of
the little River Moroco, where a military fort is established. (See
the very interesting map of the colonies of Essequibo and Demarara,
published by Maj. F. de Bouchenroeder in 1798.) The Dutch, far from
recognizing the River Pomaroun or the Moroco as the limit of their
territory, placed the boundary at Rio Barima, consequently near the
mouth of the Oroonoko itself, whence they draw a line of demarkation
from north-northwest to south-southeast towards Cuyuni. They had
even taken military occupation of the eastern bank of the small Rio
Barima before the English in 1666 had destroyed the forts of New
Zealand and New Meddleburgh, on the right bank of Pomaroun. Those
forts and that of Kyk-over-al (look everywhere around), at the
confluence of the Cuyuni, Masaruni, and Essequibo, have not been
reëstablished. Persons who had been on the spot assured me during my
stay at Angostura that the country west of Pomaroun, of which the
possession will one day be contested by England and the Republic of
Colombia, is marshy, but exceedingly fertile.”
