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LIBRARY

ISJHE MONROE DOCTRINE INVOLVED
IN THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN
VENEZUELA AND GREAT BRITON?

BY
CHAS. P. DALY, LL.D.

IS THE MONROE DOCTRINE INVOLVED IN THE CON
TROVERSY BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND
GREAT BRITAIN?

BY CHAS. P. DAJLY, LL.D.

(Reprinted from the N; Y. Herald of fan. ig, i8g6.)
The impression which appears to have been produced on the
minds of our people by the President's recent message was that
England, under cover of a {Jisputed boundary, had taken, or was
about to take possession by force, in disregard of the Monroe doc
trine, of a large part of the territory of Venezuela; which appeared
the more obvious from her refusal to allow the question in dispute
to be settled by arbitration, and in view of the fact that among the
large nations in modern times England has been one of the most
aggressive in taking and holding as a permanent possession the
territory of weaker nations, three examples of which will suffice :
Her interference on behalf of an English commercial company in
India, which was followed up by acquiring the whole of India; her
taking New York by force, in a time of peace, from the Dutch, who
discovered and settled it, and her recent occupation of Egypt.
Whether the Monroe doctrine is or is not involved in what is
known as the Venezuelan controversy is a question now open for
examination, and in what I have to say respecting it, I do not wish
to be understood as questioning that doctrine, for I believe as
fully as any one that it is our interest to maintain it; that as a
national policy it may even be more important in the future than it
is now; and one good effect at least, has resulted from President
Cleveland's message: it has disclosed, in respect to that doctrine,
how widespread throughout our country at the present day is the de
termination of our people to uphold it. ^ In the message announcing
it, in 1823, President Monroe said: "With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered, and
shall not interfere." When this was said British Guiana was one of
these existing colonies or dependencies, and the question obviously
arises, What has Great Britain done or threatened to do that calls
for our interference now?| If she has simply entered upon and
expressed her determination to keep possession of territory that

2
really belongs to her, it is no violation of the Monroe doctrine; it
is not an attempt by a European Power, in the language of the
message, " to extend its system to any portion of this hemisphere,"
which "is dangerous to our peace and safety," nor is it with respect
to governments upon this continent, ' ' who have achieved their inde
pendence and maintained it, an interposition for the purpose of
oppressing, or controlling in any other way their destiny," which
" cannot be regarded in any other light than as a manifestation of
an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."
Whether it is, what President Buchanan in his message in
i860 declared to be within the Monroe doctrine, an attempt to
deprive a neighboring Republic of a part of its territory, or what
Mr. McMasters, in a recent article, calls an attempt by Great
Britain to take from Venezuela a territory that has been estimated
as embracing an area of 33,000 square miles, but which he declares
is 109,000 square miles, and 40,000 square miles larger than the six
New England States, and which he says " she has no just claim to
whatever," a safer opinion may be formed when the facts have been
more fully investigated and made known.
( Whether this territory belongs to England or to Venezuela
appears to me to be rather a geographical and historical than apolit
ical question, and one that involves an inquiry extending over the
long period of two hundred years. What is in dispute, briefly stated,
is this : England claims that the territory extending from the mouth
of the River Essequibo to the Orinoco was a part of Dutch Guiana
when Dutch Guiana was ceded by the Dutch to the English in
1814, while Venezuela claims that it never belonged to Dutch
Guiana, but was Spanish territory, which, as such, passed to Vene
zuela in 1810, when her struggle with Spain commenced, which
resulted in the achievement of her independence. As Senor Cal
cano, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs in Venezuela, puts it, in
an article on the rights of Venezuela, published on December 22,
1895, "What was Spain's possession in 1810 belongs to Venezuela,
and what was Holland's in 1814 belongs to England." |
This gentleman, who is said to have filled many other important
public offices in Venezuela, may be accepted as one who is able to
present the Venezuelan side of the question as strongly as it can be
presented. He says, in the article above referred to, that "when
Dutch Guiana was ceded by the Dutch to the English in 1814, the
Dutch and the English knew very well, that there, at the mouth of the
Essequibo, commenced the Spanish domain"; and then continues,
"it was not merely the Dutch and the English who were aware of

this fact; it was a matter of universal knowledge; chorographers,
historians and geographers all knew it, and stated it in their charts,
in their chronicles and treatises, published in England, France and
Spain." If this is true it disposes of the whole question. But it is not
true, as will subsequently appear. He refers to no chorographer, a
title given to one who describes a district or particular country, or
to any chart or map in support of this broad statement. He refers
to two historical works only — Father Caulin's " Chorographical
History of New Andalusia," for the statement that the Dutch in
1596 attempted to ascend the River Orinoco and were driven back
by the Spanish, which is true, but the Dutch settlements west of
the Essequibo cannot be said to have become permanent until sev
eral years afterward. He also refers to the Abbe Raynal's work on
the East and West Indies, to show that in 1666 and 1740 the Dutch
were driven away by the Spaniards from the vicinity of the Esse
quibo, which may be true, for all that I know to the contrary, but
the Abbe Raynal, though an attractive writer, is not, as is well
known to scholars, very reliable upon questions of fact.
Sefior Calcano also says that Holland knew that the Spanish
domain commenced at the Essequibo, because by the fifth chapter of
the treaty of Munster, in 1748, between her and Spain, "she recog
nized Spain's rights to these territories," but no such recognition
is found in the fifth chapter or article of that celebrated treaty.
All that it provides is that Spain or Holland shall thereafter con
tinue in possession of such lordships, cities, countries, &c, in the
East and West Indies, Brazil and upon the coast of Asia, Africa and
America, as either "respectively hold and possess," and says noth
ing whatever respecting boundaries. And equally unfounded is
Senor Calcano's further statement that such a recognition is found
in the agreement entered into between Spain and Holland at Aran
juez, June 23, 1720.
f The whole of the region lying east and south of the Orinoco was
originally known as Caribana, a name derived from the Caribs, who
then inhabited it, and is represented by that name on the earliest
atlas we have, that of Ortelius, which was published at Antwerp
in 1570, in which atlas he embraces, under the name of Caribana,
all that was afterward known as Dutch and French Guiana. J Under
the extensive views that were then entertained as to what came
under and was acquired by the right of discovery it was regarded
as belonging to Spain, and the first settlers in it, east and south of
the Orinoco, it is said, were an order of Capuchin friars, under a

Spanish patent, and Miss Stevens, an American lady, who lived for
some time in the old town of Guasapati, south of the Orinoco, says
that in that town there were, during her time, the remains of an
old monastery, a chapel, and botanical gardens which these Spanish
friars had planted. In 1614 the Dutch, according to Dalton, the
historian of British Guiana, settled at the mouth of the Essequibo,
where they erected a fort, and afterwards made other settlements
west of the Essequibo, within the now disputed territory. These
first settlements were made under the auspices of some Dutch mer
chants of Zeeland, in Holland, but as the settlements and inter
course with them increased both west and east of the Essequibo
River, this infant Dutch colony was recognized by Holland and
brought under the control of the States General.
In 1 62 1 it was represented to be in a flourishing condition and
thirteen years afterward the settlement at the mouth of the Esse
quibo was visited by the Dutch navigator, De Vries, who will be
familiar to those acquainted with the history of New York when it
was a Dutch colony. These settlements were New Zeeland and
New Middelburg, on the banks of the Pumaron and the Maroco,
another at the confluence of the Cuyuni and the Essequibo,
which were all within the disputed territory, with settlements or
posts on either side of the Essequibo, and upon them the Dutch
had plantations where they cultivated tobacco, cotton and sugar.
Upon some of them sugar mills and churches were erected at the
joint expense of the settlers, which plantations were afterward
extended beyond the east bank of the Essequibo. In 1670 a Gov
ernor of Essequibo was appointed by the States General, and in
1687 a fortification was erected on Cape Nassau, the name that the
cape still bears, and which is within the disputed territory, being
about half way between the mouth of the Essequibo and that of the
Orinoco. This continuous course of settlements both west and east
of the Essequibo warrants the statement of Dalton, that "at the
close of the seventeenth century the seven united provinces of Hol
land succeeded in their endeavors to colonize this land by the cul
tivation of tobacco, cotton and probably sugar," which he contrasts
with "the conduct of the Spaniard who, in his thirst for gold,
sought an imaginary treasure while the Dutchman contented him
self with the cultivation of the soil." .
If we depended upon these facts alone to determine what would,
under such circumstances, be the natural boundary of such a
colony, or, to express it in the language of Mr. Olney in his letter
to Lord Salisbury, its legitimate territorial expansion, it might be

regarded as embracing the whole territory west of the Essequibo
to the mouth of the Orinoco, from many examples in the settlement
of our own North American colonies as to territory they had taken
possession of when the country was a wilderness and inhabited by
savages, and which distinguish one from another; a conspicuous
example of which was the settlement of the French at the mouth of
the Mississippi and but little beyond it, who ceded to the United
States by treaty at the beginning of this century, the Mississippi
from its mouth to its head waters, and the whole region west of it
to the Pacific.
When settlements are made in countries theretofore inhabited
by savages, especially over a continent like ours, it has generally
been on the coast, by the mouth of rivers ; and where the intention
was to settle permanently and develop the country, they are gener
ally regarded as having taken possession of what may be required
for that purpose, in the natural course of territorial expansion;
what they have so possessed themselves of being usually indicated
by the natural features of the country, such as mountain barriers,
the course of rivers and their tributaries, the limitations imposed or
indicated by great rivers or the proximity of other settlements in
the same region, with a recognition of their equal rights to territo
rial expansion; and where a new region inhabited only by savages
is taken possession of and a settlement made at the mouth of a
river emptying, like the Essequibo, into the sea, that possession is
regarded as embracing the river to its head waters and the tribu
taries flowing into it; the possession of a river and its tributaries
being essential as a necessary means of transport through the coun
try which ig then a wilderness; and we are told by a Spanish writer,
Alcedo, to be hereafter referred to, that the country through which
the Essequibo flowed was covered with woods to the shores of the
river, and sheltered barbarous tribes, who maintained themselves
by fishing and the chase; that the Caribs inhabiting Caribana were
on amicable terms with the Dutch and assisted them to navigate
the Essequibo and its two large tributaries, the Cuyuni and the
Mazaroni, to entrap the Indians, whom they brought to labor on
their plantations. This would imply possession then by the Dutch
of the whole country through which these rivers flowed, which may
be said practically, from the configuration of the country, to em
brace the whole of the disputed territory.
But it would seem that the Dutch did not so regard it sixty-two
years after their settlement at the mouth of the Essequibo, if we
may infer what the view of the Dutch then was from the Dutch

maps of that period, 1696, which are the earliest maps I have been
able to find delineating Dutch Guiana. At that period the country
in the vicinity of the Orinoco was called New Andalusia. What was
then known as Venezuela lay to the south of it; and this Spanish
province of New Andalusia is represented on these Dutch maps as
extending south of the Orinoco, and including the whole of the now
disputed territory. The earliest Dutch maps, or map of any kind
of Dutch Guiana, that I have been able to find is one of Pieter
Mortier, a Dutch geographer, compiled, as he says, from the best
authorities, which is in an atlas published at Amsterdam. It is
without date, but this, from some familiarity with the subject, I am
able to fix approximately at 1696.
It gives the Dutch settlements west of the Essequibo before
referred to, and represents the Spanish province of New Andalusia
as extending beyond the Orinoco and into the now disputed terri
tory, and the territory east of the Essequibo he distinguishes by
the word " Holandais." But another Dutch map of about the same
period, by Charles Allard, shows this more clearly. It is contained
in an atlas published at Amsterdam by Covens & Mortier, which
gives the whole boundary of the Spanish province of New Andalusia
by a carefully drawn red line, showing that it extended over the
Orinoco and included the whole territory from the mouth of the
Orinoco to that of the Essequibo, the course of this red line clearly
indicating that it was then a Spanish province, and the country
east of the Essequibo is represented on this map as Guiana.
It is a material fact in this controversy that the united testi
mony of these Dutch cartographers shows that up to 1708 the
country now in dispute was regarded by them as Spanis-h territory,
and it is scarcely supposable that nearly a century after the Dutch
began their settlements these cartographers could have had any
object in diminishing the extent of a Dutch colony. But maps are
by no means infallible, and at that early period cartographers did
not always limit themselves to what they had ascertained, but some
times put down what they imagined. But it is also to be said that
the Dutch, who had been great navigators, were at that time in
advance of other nations in geographical knowledge. The first
atlas and the first work on physical geography were published in
Holland, and the maps of these cartographers had then a deserved
reputation for the extent of the geographical information, they
furnished and their comparative accuracy. Of course it cannot be
declared that they represented what was then understood by the
Dutch government to be the extent of the Dutch colony. They are

not in this respect entitled to the weight that would be attached to
a map published by the government, or one of its departments,
like our Hydrographic Office, but they are entitled, in my mind, to
the consideration that I have not in my researches found anything
to contradict them for a period of many years thereafter.
On the contrary, Doppelmaier's great German atlas, published
in Nuremberg in 1742/ shows a settlement or post called St.
Thomas, with the words" sub Hispanis " on the east side of the
Orinoco and near its mouth, and Guiana as east and south of the
Essequibo, indicating that the region west of that river belonged
to Spain, although it shows Cape Nassau, as on previous maps
about half way between the mouth of the Essequibo and that of
the Orinoco. Within a few years, however — that is, in 1759 —
the Dutch government, as Lord Salisbury has stated, claimed the
basin of the Cuyuni River and its branches, which is west of the
Essequibo and within the disputed territory, as belonging to the
Dutch, the government of Holland having sent a remonstrance to
Spain complaining of the incursion of the Spaniards into the Dutch
posts and settlements on the banks of the Cuyuni, which remon
strance was followed by another in 1769, to which remonstrances,
he says, Spain made no reply, and that it is evident from archives
now existing in Spain that the Spanish Council of State did not
consider that they had the means of rebutting these remonstrances,
and that they regarded the reports sent them as to the Spanish
claim by their subordinate officers as unsatisfactory and improb
able; while Senator Lodge, in his recent speech in the Senate, says
that before this — in 1758 — when the Director-General of the Esse
quibo in that year sent a protest to the Spanish authorities com
plaining that Spanish troops had driven the Dutch from one of the
posts they had on the banks of the Cuyuni, a reply was received
saying that the River Cuyuni and its dependencies belonged to
Spain. It may possibly be that during the half century that intervened
from the time of the publication of the Dutch maps to this period
— !^58 — the Dutch colony had so increased in population and trade
that the territory west of the Essequibo became requisite to it in
the ordinary course of territorial expansion, or it may be that when
the States General of Holland recognised the infant colony and
took control of it, which they did by granting to the Dutch West
India Company certain rights in it, and exercised other acts of
dominion, they regarded the territory from the mouth of the Esse
quibo to that of the Orinoco as having been taken possession of by

8
them, as Spain had not permanently settled in it, her settlements,
so far as made, being very limited and close to the Orinoco, and
because her claim beyond that, if any, would have extended to the
whole region originally known as Caribana, as all that it rested
upon was the vague and loose ideas that then existed as to the
extent of possession that was incident to the right of discovery,
which claim neither the Dutch, the French nor the English paid
any attention to when they settled in Caribana, England also hav
ing had a colony there for some years, which, in 1674, she exchanged
with the Dutch for Newi York.
It may be, therefore, as I have said, that when the States Gen
eral of Holland took the Dutch settlement there made under its
control, it had the right to take possession, and did so, of the terri
tory west of Essequibo, or that part of it where the Spanish had no
settlements and they had, such as New Zeeland, Middelburg, Kick-
overal, Cape Nassau, which they fortified, and settlements or posts
on both sides of the Essequibo. However that may have been, it
is certain that Holland claimed all the territory as hers more than
half a century before Dutch Guiana was ceded to the English. It
may be further stated that for some years before and after these
Dutch remonstrances were sent to Spain European cartographers
generally, as well as Alcedo, an eminent Spanish geographer,
treated the now disputed territory as belonging to the Dutch.
I have not gone over all the European atlases between that time
and 1814, nor would it, I suppose, be possible to do so in this
country. The largest collection of atlases, from the first one, by
Ortelius, in 1570, to the beginning of the present century, that I
know of, and I have seen the principal collections in Europe, is the
one belonging to the American Geographical Society at New York,
and what I have been able to gather from this large collection has
been confirmatory of what has been above stated. My space will
admit only of my referring to a few of these maps. An undated
map of Herman Moll's, entitled the Coasts, Countries and Islands
of the South Sea Company, gives the whole region east of the Ori
noco to Dutch and French Guiana. The general atlas of the world,.
London, 1721, has what is called a new map of the world from the
latest observations. It shows Cape Nassau considerably to the
west of the Essequibo and the Territory of Caribana nearly as in
previous maps. In Henry Popple's atlas of the Portuguese Empire
in America, with the French and Spanish Settlements Adjacent,
there is a map which, from the date of other maps in the atlas, I fix
at about 1750, showing the territory from the mouth of the Orinoco

to that of the Essequibo as separate from New Andalusia, with the
name of Surinam, evidently given by the Dutch, and it is distin
guished from New Andalusia by being colored, which, if correct,
shows that at that time the now disputed territory was distinct from
that of the Spanish. In another map in the same atlas of the
British possessions this is shown more clearly, which represents
Surinam as far as then settled by the Dutch, with the same bound
ary from the Essequibo around the coast to the Orinoco and then
south to Lake Cayama and the island of St. Thomas, with the
Dutch settlements west of the Essequibo, as in the Dutch maps I
have referred to, fifty-five years before. In Thomas Jeffery's map,
London, 1778, the boundary of Dutch Guiana is represented by a
line from the mouth of the Orinoco and thence around the coast to
the River Maroni, which is the boundary between Dutch and French
Guiana. Thomas Kitchen's General Atlas of the World, London, 1782,
represents as Dutch Guiana the country to the south of the Ori
noco eastward to the Maroni River, the boundary, as I have said,
of French Guiana, the boundary being marked by colored lines.
Within the lines represented as Dutch Guiana is the River Cuyuni,
the two Dutch forts heretofore referred to, the Dutch Cape Nassau,
and the Dutch settlement far to the west of the Essequibo, or, in
general words, all of the territory now claimed by the English as
acquired from the Dutch. This atlas was published fourteen years
before the English conquest of Dutch Guiana and thirty-two years
before the colony was ceded to the English by the Dutch, at a time
when there could not have been any interest on the part of an
English cartographer to give an erroneous representation of what
was then understood as Dutch Guiana; and Arrowsmith's English
Atlas, London, 1806, includes as Dutch Guiana the region west of
the Essequibo and a considerable way inland.
But more important than this is what is found in the work of the
Spanish geographer, Alcedo (Note A). It is in five volumes, pub
lished in Madrid, 1 786-1 789, the original work in Spanish being
now exceedingly rare, a copy of which is in the library of the
American Geographical Society. A translation by G. A. Thompson
was published in London, 1812-1815. To cite passages from this
voluminous work would require too much space. I shall there
fore confine myself to a very brief enumeration of what he states,
giving the volumes and: pages where the passages I refer to can
be found in the English translation. He describes Caribana as
a large country which extends to the mouth of the Orinoco, and

10
which includes the Dutch colony of Essequibo, Surinam, Berbici,
and the French colony of Cayenne (Vol. I., p. 310). He places
the Rivers Cuyuni, Carmen and Cosacuro, which are all in the
disputed territory, as in that part of Guiana possessed by the
Dutch, who had built forts on either side of the Essequibo, and
says that by means of these rivers the Dutch merchants of the prov
ince, assisted by the Caribs, go to entrap the Indians (Vol. I., pp.
318, 524, 570). That on two of the islands of the Essequibo are
plantations, with some houses forming part of the colony which the
Dutch had established on the shores of that river (Vol. II. , pp. 82,
83). He refers to the River Maraquin, which is within the dis
puted territory, as in that part of Guiana possessed by the Dutch
(Vol. II. , pp. 445, 451), and to the River Mazaroni, which is also
within the disputed territory, as one which the Dutch navigate,
being protected by the Caribs (Vol. III., p. 86).
I have not, except in a very limited extent, been able to follow
the French and German atlases from the time of Sanson and that of
Doppelmaier in 1742, to 18 14; but as far as I "have seen them I have
found nothing contrary to what I have stated respecting this
period. The German cartographers during the present century
have been noted for their care and accuracy in map making, and it
may be material in the present inquiries to state that the three last
German atlases, by Kiepert, Andree and Stieler, the last edition of
Stieler being in 1891, works of deserved reputation, all agree in
giving British Guiana a western boundary, drawn in a general
southerly direction from the mouth of the Orinoco, thus giving to
Great Britain all that she now claims and where she has over 40,000
inhabitants. These facts show, so far as the representations of cartographers
and geographers are entitled to weight, that the territory claimed
by Venezuela was regarded as belonging to the Dutch for more than
half a century before it was ceded by the Dutch to the English. It
is said, however, by Miss Stevens that between the years 1780 and
1783 orders were issued by the King of Spain for peopling and
governing the portion of Guiana lying between the Essequibo and the
Orinoco, with directions to investigate the Dutch trading posts, and
Senor Calcano says that before this, by the royal decrees of the
King'of Spain, of April 13, 1779, and October 1, 1780, a Spanish
naval officer was directed to storm a fort which the Dutch were
erecting on the River Maroco, and to inform the Governor of
Essequibo that the Spanish government would not tolerate tres
passes by strangers on land of the Spanish domain; and the New

11
York Sun of December 20, 1895, has published a portion of a map
said to have been authorized by the Spanish government in 1796
showing that Dutch Guiana was to the east of the Essequibo, and
the country west of it, which includes the disputed territory,
belonged to Spain ; the weight to be given to which I am unable to
determine without reading these decrees and seeing this map, in
which connection I should mention that a writer of January 2, 1896,
calls attention to a Venezuelan account of a Spanish royal order of
1780 establishing rules to people the province of Guiana and to
occupy land, which states that this province commenced at the
windward of the fall of the River Orinoco into the sea on the
border of the Dutch colony of Essequibo; which this writer regards
as an admission by Venezuela that leaves no doubt that in 1780 the
Spanish government admitted the existence of the Dutch possession
to the mouth of the Orinoco; which is not so clear to me as it seems
to the writer, as I have met with other instances in which the
Spaniards use the name of Guiana for the territory west of the
Essequibo, which name of Guiana, Dalton says, was given by the
Dutch and meant wild coast.
The facts here brought together, I think, sufficiently show how
difficult, if not impossible, it will be for the Commission appointed
by the President to do what the act of Congress under which they
were appointed requires of them — that is, " to report upon the true
divisional line " between Venezuela and British Guiana, but it is
possible for a board of arbitration to say what, in view of all the
circumstances, would be a fair line of separation or boundary.
This Lord Salisbury will not consent to; that is, he is willing "to
hold open for public negotiations and even arbitration the unsettled
land between the Schomburgk line and what the English consider
their rightful boundary, but not the territory within the Schom
burgk line, an arbitrary one, fixed some years ago by their own
officials; the reason given for the refusal being that the right of the
English to that was undoubted, the claim of Venezuela to include
which in the arbitration, Lord Salisbury says, is(a "pretension
hardly less exorbitant than would be a refusal of Great Britain to
agree to an arbitration on the boundary of British Columbia and
Alaska, unless the United States would consent to bring into ques
tion the one-half of the whole area of the latter territory."
But this illustration is not analogous. The uncertainty, if I am
warranted in so expressing it, as to what was Spanish and what was
Dutch territory, has existed for two hundred years, as shown by
Dutch maps at the beginning of that period. These show that the

12
whole region west of the Essequibo to the mouth of the Orinoco
was Spanish territory, and in the claim made to it by Spain some
thirty-five years before the English possession of the colony, no
distinction was made as to any part of it, but the whole territory was
claimed west of the Essequibo, and such being the fact, what ground -
can there be for distinguishing part of the territory that lies within
an arbitrary line drawn by Sir Robert Schomburgk, a Prussian sur
veyor employed by Great Britain, as a particular part in respect to
which England has, as Lord Salisbury says, "an undoubted right ?"
Where a dispute exists between two individuals, one of them may
rightfully refuse to submit the matter to arbitration, who feels
assured that he has but to resort to a judicial tribunal to have his
rights enforced; but when a dispute exists between two independent
States upon a question of boundary, there is no such tribunal to
resort to, and the only way in which it can be settled is by arbitra
tion or the sword, and this brings up the question whether the
refusal of Great Britain to have the matter in dispute between her
and Venezuela settled by arbitration is a position that calls for the
application by us of the Monroe doctrine — that is, if a question of
this kind arises between a European colony and one of the South
American States which that State is willing to have settled by arbi
tration, but the parent country of the colony is not, that it is our
right and we will compel her to do so, to the full extent of our
power, which is a view of the Monroe doctrine of extensive obliga
tion and fraught with widespread consequences.
When the United States was invited by Colombia and Mexico to
send delegates representing the United States to a Congress of
Republics, to be held at Panama, for making the Monroe doctrine
more effectual, which our government did not accept, it may be
well to recall the language of a resolution then adopted by the
House of Representatives, the close of which was in these words:
" The people of the United States should be left free to act in any
crisis in such a manner-as their feelings of friendship toward these
Republics and as their own honor and policy may at the time dic
tate." At the present time — that is, by the census of 1891 — British
Guiana had a population of 278,295, of which 2,533 were born in
Europe, 99,615 were Africans, 105,465 East Indians and 3,714
Chinese, and Venezuela had a population of 2,323,529, the propor
tion of the white race in each being about one per cent. I have, I
think, set forth the nature and full extent of the Venezuelan claim,
and whether we will go to war with Great Britain to compel her to
have it settled by arbitration may be safely left to what President

13
Van Buren said was characteristic of our people — the sober second
thought — who will consider, to use the language of the resolution
just referred to, whether our friendship for this Republic and our
own honor and policy demand that we should carry the Monroe
doctrine to that extent. A war between two great nations in such
a matter with all that such a war will entail on each, appears to me
to be extraordinary, unless it has its source in an instinctive desire
to make war upon each other, which I do not believe. The same
sober second thought may be commended to the English Govern
ment with the expectation that upon a more thorough understand
ing of the facts it may see its way to avoid such a conflict, as I think
that if there ever was a case that should be settled by arbitration it
is this.
Charles P. Daly.
New York,
January 17, 1896.

Note A. — The title of Alcedo's work, taken from the first volume, is as follows:
Diccionario Geografico-Historico de las Indias Occidentales 0 America : Es a saber:
de los Reynos del Peru, Nueva Espana, Tierra Firme, Chile,, y Nuevo Reyno de
Granada, Etc., Escrito por el Coronel D. Antonio de Alcedo , Caption de Reales Guardias
Espanolas. Tomo I. Con Licencia.
En la Imprenta de Benito Cano. En Madrid Ano de MDCCLXXXVI.
The military rank of the writer and the imprimatur give an official character to the
work. Note B. — In the article By Mr. Charles H. Lugrin in the Herald of Sunday,
January 26th, on Guiana's Boundaries a Century Ago, the writer gives a quotation from
a manuscript History of Guiana, which he says is in his possession, and adds that a
reference in the quotation "to the map sent by the Spanish Government to DAnville,
the French geographer, on which the lines of Dutch Guiana are laid down in accord
ance with a description given herein, seems to be important, and the map, if it could
be found, would be almost conclusive evidence.''
The quotation from the manuscript which he gives says nothing about any map,
The words of the quotation are as follows:
' ' With respect to the Dutch line it appears by certain authentic documents trans
mitted by the Court of Spain to M. D'Anville, Geographer and Engineer to the King
of France, in which there is a distinct and full description of the Dutch territories
wherein the line extends to the westward of Lake Amacou, making a distinct curve
for the Lake of Parima and then running up to the Rio Negro according to the dotted
line on the general map of Guiana." (So printed.)
It does not follow from the statement that certain authentic documents were trans
mitted by the Court of Spain to D'Anville, that one of these documents was a map of
Dutch Guiana, with a dotted line showing the boundaries of that colony. There may
have been a map, but this is not necessarily inferrible from the statement.

14
It does not appear from the manuscript quoted when these documents were sent
from Spain to the French geographer, but in D'Anville's atlas of 1752 there is a map
of South America (dated 1748. in which the boundaries of Dutch and French
Guiana are distinctly marked by coloured lines, and the boundaries of Dutch Guiana
as therein laid down are in accordance with the statement made by the writer of the
manuscript in Mr. Lugrin's possession. This map may have been made by D'Anville
from documents transmitted to him by the Spanish Court as the manuscript states.
In this map Lake Amacou (or Amucu, as the map has it), lies south of the southern
boundary and east of the western boundary of Dutch Guiana, as laid down, and the
curved line referred to in the manuscript is drawn from the point of junction of the
southern and western boundaries passing Lake Parima (a lake then believed in, but
which does not exist), and then, as the writer of the manuscript states, is carried to
the Rio Negro, a branch of the Amazon, and continued to the Amazon itself.
This map of D'Anville's, of 1748, has this cartographical importance that it
represents the territory now in dispute as then belonging to the Dutch.
In my article on this controversy in the Herald of January 19, I did not refer to
D'Anville's map, because my space was too limited to include all the cartographical
evidence from the middle of the last century to the period of the cession of Guiana by
the Dutch to the English in 18 14; contenting myself with the general statement that
all the cartographical evidence during this period of about forty years, so far as I had
been able to ascertain, warranted the statement that the now disputed territory was
then generally recognized by cartographers as belonging to the Dutch.
Chas. P. Daly.

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