A Diplomatic Episode
HISTORICAL and political conjunctures are sometimes curious and unexpected. That William H. Seward should join hands with a Spanish admiral across a gap of three hundred and seventy-five years for the protection of the swarthy republic of San Domingo seems like an exuberant fiction rather than a sober
historical fact. It was the prevailing impression among certain citizens of the United States, some twenty years ago, that this distinguished old admiral was dead. They found to their surprise and confusion that he was still living, and, like the statue in Don Giovanni, could come down from his historic pedestal and stalk through our diplomatic literature with a proud priority. The enterprise which he so signally defeated was nothing less than an ingenious attempt to rob the great commander of the fame of one of his earliest achievements, and to wrest from the republic of San Domingo one of the island jewels it wears upon its necklace.
Of the multitude of islands that dot the Caribbean Sea there is one so small that spectacles are almost needed to see it on any general map of the West Indies. It is no discredit to our readers to assume that the name of this island is unfamiliar, and that most of them would go to the foot in a geography class, if asked to indicate its location. This island, as described by the United States Coast Survey, is but three quarters of a mile long and about half a mile wide. It is composed almost entirely of a bell-shaped hill, the summit of which is five hundred feet above the sea. Its commanding height makes it a prominent object to the mariner. Seen from a distance it has the appearance of a high sail, and from this fact gets its Spanish name of Alto Velo. This island is situated about fifteen miles south of Beata, the southern point of the island of San Domingo.
It was this little bell-shaped dot in the ocean, uninhabited, but not unknown, which at the close of the war was to become the theatre of a complicated and interesting controversy. Notwithstanding the millions of square miles which constitute the territory of the United States, it was perfectly clear to certain citizens of this country (at least to two or three of them) that the dignity and the interest of our government demanded that this island should be annexed to the national domain. When, with melancholy retrospection, we recall the efficiency of our navy at that time, we can see that it would not have been a difficult matter for a few of our war vessels to pluck this island up by the roots and bring it to the United States. And it is no exaggeration of the facts of history to say that this was actually undertaken by some of our merchant marine. Indeed, it was the attempt to ship this island to New York, where it was to be sold at the rate of fifteen dollars per ton, that occasioned, shortly after, a miniature war-dance at the national capital.
To extract from the mazes of the national archives some of the more interesting and important phases of this diplomatic afterpiece, and to show the historic influences that blended in its solution, is the object of this paper.
In 1856 the Congress of the United States passed what is known as the Guano Island Act, which, by the approval of the President, became a law on the 18th of August of that year. The law substantially declares that when any citizen may have discovered a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key not within the lawful jurisdiction of any government, and shall take peaceable possession thereof, and keep the same, this island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States. The conditions prescribed were, first, that notice should be given to the Department of State, as soon as practicable, by the discoverer, verified by affidavit, describing the island, its latitude and longitude, and showing that possession was taken in the name of the United States, and that satisfactory evidence be furnished to the State Department that the island was not, at the time of the discovery or occupation, in the possession of any other government or of its citizens.
To the discoverer the exclusive right was granted, at the pleasure of Congress, of occupying such island for the purpose of obtaining guano and of selling and delivering the same to citizens of the United States, and to none others, for the purpose of being used in this country. The law further contained a significant provision authorizing the President, at his discretion, to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to protect the rights of the discoverer.
The object and provisions of the law are clearly apparent. It was intended to protect and encourage American commercial enterprise. Any citizen of the United States who should discover an uninhabited bird-roost in the ocean might unfurl the flag of the United States above it and carry away as much of the guano as he desired, provided it was used for the enrichment of his own country.
There was only one restriction laid upon the enterprise of the American discoverer : and that was that the island or key should not be within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government and not occupied by its citizens. The inconvenience of this restriction is immediately apparent : it would be so much easier for the American navigator to seize any island that he happened to find without troubling himself about international formalities ; it would be so much easier for him to unfurl the American flag over an island which had been discovered three hundred and sixty-two years before the act was passed than to find one previously undiscovered and unknown. It was this embarrassing restriction which caused all the trouble in the Alto Velo case.
Encouraged and inspired by this act of Congress, American vessels fitted out by firms engaged in the guano trade immediately began to cruise in search of islands that were uninhabited and unoccupied, although, as will be seen, sufficient pains were not taken to avoid those under the jurisdiction of other governments.
In May, 1860, four years after the passage of this act, the Department of State received a letter from W. T. Kendall, a Baltimore merchant, stating that his brig Delta, of Baltimore, Captain R. Daulby, on the 19th of March, 1860, discovered a deposit of guano upon Alto Velo, an island in the Caribbean Sea; that he took possession of the island, loaded his vessel with guano, and sent her home, Captain Daulby remaining on the island with two men to work and hold possession. Mr. Kendall declared, and doubtless believed, that the island lay out of the jurisdiction of any other government and was uninhabited at the time of the discovery.
On the very same date, Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo, another Baltimore firm, wrote to the State Department, claiming to have taken possession of this same island of Alto Velo, and that the island was then in their possession and was occupied by Captain S. A. Kimball and crew of the schooner Boston. The aspect of the case then was simply that two American sea-captains, representing different firms, laid claim to the same island, and that this island was Alto Velo. The question which of them had priority does not materially concern us. In the subsequent proceedings, however, the claim of Patterson & Murguiendo assumed more importance, and if the allegations contained in their affidavits were true, priority must be awarded to their claim.
Extracting from the memorials, affidavits, and correspondence with the State Department the significant events in this history, it appears that this Baltimore firm fitted out a vessel, the schooner Boston, of Baltimore, under the command of Captain S. R. Kimball, and that on the 23d of February he took possession of the island of Alto Velo. Captain Kimball put up a written notice of his occupancy of the island, and then left it for the purpose of chartering vessels to export the guano. He returned March 23 and took peaceable possession of the island and proceeded to work and ship the deposits. In the course of the next seven months they shipped more than a thousand tons of guano, from which they realized a profit of $9000. During these seven months their occupation of the island was not disturbed. Certain fishing vessels from Hayti visited the island and made no protest against its occupation by the Americans ; for the reason, perhaps, that Hayti had no valid claim to it.
The American occupants no doubt congratulated themselves upon the beneficence of this law of Congress, and upon the ease with which they had availed themselves of its privileges. But this industrious and profitable complacency was somewhat disturbed one morning when the men in charge of the island discovered a Dominican man-ofwar lying off the shore. Her captain was in an interrogative frame of mind, and asked some ominous questions concerning the nationality of the inhabitants and their business on the island. The claimants alleged that when he went away he took a bucket of guano with him. That the captain of a Dominican man-of-war should have taken a bucket of guano from under the American flag without paying for it must have seemed an unwarrantable liberty to these Americans, who were selling it in New York at fifteen dollars per ton ! The Dominican government evidently took time enough to ruminate, for, if the affidavits of the claimants are true, it was not till October 23, or some six weeks later, that the man-of-war, the Merced, appeared before the island, under the command of General Juan Evertz, who sent ashore a letter in which the iron doctrine of necessity, represented by a man-of-war, was elegantly upholstered with the velvet courtesies of diplomatic speech. The letter stated that the Dominican government was alarmed at the disagreeable advices that foreigners had violated that portion of Dominican territory which belongs to the province of Azua, with the object of exporting guano. He was authorized to dislodge them “ with the greatest brevity.” The commander “ trusted that they would not depart from the justice and moderation characteristic of an American, and to reflect upon the consequences that such circumstances would bring on an infraction of international rights.” He gave the twelve men on the island twentyfour hours in which to depart. Miller, the American in charge, answered that there was no vessel at the island at that time in which he and his men could embark. The commander of the man-ofwar replied, with renewed courtesy, that his own vessel was at their disposal, and that he would with much pleasure receive them in it accompanied by all their men and effects. His instructions, however, forbade him to grant the request of Captain Miller to leave one man on the island. The men and their effects were thereupon removed by the man-ofwar and taken to the city of San Domingo. The Dominican government immediately acquainted the United States commercial agent with its action, and although it insisted that it would have a lawful right to try and punish these men, it nevertheless proposed to put them at the disposal of the commercial agent, with all their effects, " reserving to the government of San Domingo the right to reclaim indemnity for the trespasses which had been committed.” The men and the materials were therefore delivered to the commercial agent. Throughout this transaction the Dominican government acted with great moderation.
Imagine the surprise, at least the disappointment, of the American agent of this Baltimore firm, Captain Kimball, on arriving at Alto Velo soon after, and finding that it had resumed its primitive condition of solitude. He immediately proceeded to San Domingo, and learning the facts and the particulars of the eviction, offered to pay the Dominican government a fair amount for the guano which had been taken, and also to buy what was left, on the supposition that the government of San Domingo had a legal right to the island. An amicable discussion followed, in which Captain Kimball stated that the amount of guano shipped was 1033 tons, in six different vessels. The Dominican government proposed indemnity for the guano taken and agreed to urge no claim for the illegal occupation of the island. It fixed the price of the royalty at the moderate sum of eight dollars per ton, and proposed if that price were not satisfactory that the matter be settled by arbitration. Captain Kimball declined to accept the terms proposed and was allowed, with his laborers, to return to the United States. Had he recognized the claim of San Domingo and accepted this agreement, it would have been far better for his employers. He concluded, however, to wrap his cause in the American flag, and to fall back upon the assurance of the guano act that the land and naval forces of the United States might be used to protect the rights of the discoverer.
Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo, the Baltimore firm, lost no time in presenting to the Department of State a claim against the government of San Domingo.
Hon. Jeremiah S. Black, who afterwards figured prominently in this case, was at that time Secretary of State. Although favorably disposed towards the claimants, Mr. Black deemed it desirable, inasmuch as the government of San Domingo was understood to claim jurisdiction over the island, to secure a report from the United States commercial agent at San Domingo, Mr. Cazneau, as to the ground on which its claim to the island was based. Mr. Cazneau reported that by a Dominican law of 1855 the islands of Alto Velo and Beata were defined as a portion of the province of Azua. He recited the fact that the island was uninhabited, and, although it claimed jurisdiction, he knew of no instance in which the Dominican government had exercised a de facto jurisdiction.
The cloud of war which had been gathering in the United States during this little commercial episode soon broke upon the country. The government had something more important upon its hands than the disposition of a few tons of insular earth in the Caribbean Sea. Though the attention of the Department of State was frequently solicited by the claimants, all the resources of our arms were engaged at home, while all the resources of our diplomacy were needed to resist intervention from abroad. At the close of Buchanan’s administration the portfolio of the State Department had passed from the hands of Mr. Black to those of William H. Seward. Mr. Black subsequently became the attorney for Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo, so that the claimants had the advantage not only of having one of the finest lawyers in the country, but also one under whose administration in the State Department the claim had been filed.
The smoke of the war had scarcely passed away before Mr. Black promptly brought his claim to the attention of the government. It was referred to the State Department for examination. In that department it was committed by Mr. Seward to the Examiner of Claims, Mr. E. Peshine Smith, a lawyer of marked ability. The examiner reported adversely to the claim. The grounds of his decision were that the proofs submitted by the claimants that the island was not in the possession of another government were not sufficient. He insisted that such jurisdiction may exist in a foreign government, though actual possession may not have been taken, or if taken may not have been maintained; he recited a judicial decision of Lord Stowell, in which that judge showed “ how fallacious would be an attempt to deprive the United States of islands in the open sea, or off the mouth of the Mississippi, upon the ground that they were desert, uninhabited, and unoccupied.”
The island of Alto Velo lies only fifteen miles from the mainland of San Domingo, or about half as far as Nantucket is from the United States coast, and Mr. Smith pertinently asked whether if the island of Nantucket had remained uninhabited and unoccupied by the government, or any person under its authority, it would be tolerated that a foreign power should seize and occupy it by force. He expressed the opinion that the controlling question in regard to jurisdiction over islands situated like that of Alto Velo is this : Are such adjacent islands necessary to the security and protection of the mainland, so that their occupation by a hostile power would be dangerous ?
The examiner’s report was laid before the President at a cabinet meeting, and upon recommendation of the Secretary of State was adopted without discussion. A memorandum to that effect was filed in the State Department and a copy furnished to Judge Black.
A man of ordinary courage and persistence would have abandoned his claim at this point; but Judge Black was a man of extraordinary courage and extraordinary persistence. It was just at this exigency that his remarkable abilities were most needed for the protection of his clients. He was not the man to be extinguished by a memorandum from the State Department. He was not only a personal friend of one of his clients, but he was also a personal friend of President Johnson, and at this date in his administration had considerable influence over him. He immediately wrote a letter to the President, accompanied by a skillfully prepared brief, in which he recited, with his accustomed force, the grievous wrongs of his clients. Mr. Black knew how to paint them. There is every reason to suppose that he painted them conscientiously. We must acquit the American claimants in this matter of all attempts at fraud. They undoubtedly believed in the justice of their cause. In his brief Judge Black claimed that “ the island was totally barren and desolate, and had been previously uninhabited and unclaimed by any state, people, or government; ” that his clients had taken possession of it under the act of Congress, in the name of the United States, and had filed notice of the discovery and occupation with the State Department, and entered the required bond. He described the eviction of his clients as a case of naked spoliation, and as in open contempt of their rights as discoverers, occupants, and Americans ; as a grievous wrong, a shameless robbery ; and said “ that the faith of the United States is so solemnly pledged to restore their property that their final success in pursuit of justice can hardly be doubted.” Mr. Black patriotically referred to the gross iusult rendered to the American flag by the Dominican government. He went so far as to assert that the island of Alto Velo, after its occupation by his clients under the guano act, became virtually annexed to the United States, and that to expel the American occupants under such circumstances was like any other invasion of our territory. Judge Black proposed what he termed with correctness “a short and simple way of dealing with the business.” This was to send an American man-of-war immediately to the spot and put his clients in possession.
The act of 1856, as already noticed, authorized the President, at his discretion, to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to protect the rights of the discoverer. It did not authorize, however, the use of the navy to wrest a little island from its political setting in the Atlantic which had been established hundreds of years before.
Baron Munchausen, in his famous and somewhat highly colored narrative, mentions the discovery on his voyage to North America of a floating island. The Baron thought it was altogether disturbing to any fixed geographical notions to have an island floating about in this roving way, so he drove an immense spike through the centre and nailed it fast to the ocean bed. The method proposed by Mr. Black in the case of Alto Velo was entirely the reverse of this. It was to pull up the spike, loose the island from its political connections, and float it off to the United States for the sole benefit of his clients. In his brief Judge Black rightly described this island as “barren, desolate, and uninhabited ; ” but he did violence to the facts, however, when he stated that it was unclaimed by any state, people, or government. He at least overlooked the fact that while himself Secretary of State he had secured a report from the commercial agent of the United States, who had expressly declared that the island of Alto Velo was defined by the laws of San Domingo of 1855 as a portion of the province of Azua. Rightly or wrongly, therefore, the Dominican government had thus asserted its claim to the island more than a year before Congress had passed the guano act.
Under the pressure of Mr. Black’s solicitation, the President once more referred the claim to the Department of State. The matter by this time had become a somewhat complicated one. A New York firm, recognizing the claim of the San Domingo government to this island, had wisely made a contract with that government for the purchase and removal of the guano and were shipping it at a good profit. Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo had thus the mortification of seeing an American firm working under remunerative conditions and under amicable relations to the Dominican government the guano which they claimed by right of discovery. It was too late for them to repent and acknowledge the right of the Dominican government, as they would better have done in the first place. A man-of-war was needed not only to suppress the claim of Sau Domingo, but also to eject the Americans who had entered into contract with that government. So far as this was a conflict between citizens of the United States, Mr. Seward declined to enter into it. He referred them to the legal tribunals for the settlement of the controversy. But Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo insisted that the San Domingo government was the responsible party, and the fundamental question came up once more whether, when Messrs. Patterson & Murguiendo took possession of that island, it was not in the legal jurisdiction of some foreign country.
The whole question was thus reduced to a purely historical and political one, and this phase of it will probably be more interesting to the reader than the complexities of diplomatic discussion. First, as has already been mentioned, the political claim to the island is a very definite one. This republic achieved its independence of Hayti in 1844. In the constitution which it adopted and proclaimed on the 18th of November of that year, it declared that the ancient Spanish part of the island of Sau Domingo, with the adjacent islands, formed the territory of the Dominican republic. Among the adjacent islands mentioned as definitely belonging to Dominican territory was the island of Beata and that of Alto Velo. From the report of the United States Coast Survey we see that Beata Island is only four miles from Beata Point on the mainland ; and that Alto Velo, instead of being forty miles beyond the extreme point of San Domingo, as alleged by one captain, is only six and a quarter miles from the southwest part of Beata Island. From the report of the Coast Survey we may infer that these islands are really parts of the mainland. There are only three fathoms between Beata and Beata Point; and although the channel between Alto Velo and Beata is described as quite clear, yet the report says “ it will be prudent to keep outside of all.”
But Mr. Seward was not content to show that the Dominican government had claimed these islands before the guano act was passed; he determined to show also the historical and ethical foundation on which that claim rested, even if it were necessary to wake a certain famous navigator from the dead. One of the distinguishing traits of Mr. Seward’s character comes out in this examination. As a lawyer, he was noted from the beginning of his career for the generosity and power with which he espoused the cause of the weak and friendless. This had a notable illustration in the celebrated Freeman case, in which Mr. Seward, against much popular clamor, defended a half-idiotic criminal arraigned on the charge of murder. The subsequent death of the criminal from a diseased brain vindicated Mr. Seward’s judgment as well as his heart. There was another trait in his character which has linked his name with the watchword of liberty : it was his reverence for the Higher Law. He arraigned with moral vigor the injustice of oppression. He proclaimed the everlasting obligation of nations as well as of individuals to do right. So in the Alto Velo case both these characteristics were united, not to disturb the calm impartiality of his judgment, but to give moral vigor to his work. He had an undisguised sympathy with the weak and infantile republic, on the one hand, and a profound sense of the injustice of robbing it of a portion of its territory, on the other hand. Having reached this conclusion on the political and ethical merits of the case, Mr. Seward, when the matter was referred to him again, determined to back it up with an array of irrefutable historical proof.
In the examination that followed, the value of ancient records and charts in determining territorial rights received a striking illustration.
The State Department had a library, at that time, of about twenty thousand volumes. It contained certain old and dusty folios invaluable to the antiquary, but of little interest to any one else. Some years before, the government had purchased of Dr. John G. Kohl, an eminent German cartographer, his collection of early maps relating to the American continent. Dr. Kohl spent some time in this country cataloguing his maps, but it is a matter of great regret that the inadequate encouragement he received from our government should have driven him back to Europe, where he died in 1878. Hon. Charles Deane, in a notice of his death written for the Massachusetts Historical Society, says of him, “After the death of Humboldt he was unquestionably the most distinguished geographer in Europe.”
It could hardly have been supposed at the time this collection was purchased by the United States that it would ever attain any great practical utility. We can imagine some prosaic, hard-headed utilitarian regretting that the government had not spent its six thousand dollars in some more profitable way than on a collection of maps to be stored in its archives. Indeed, little care was taken at the outset to preserve them, and Mr. Justin Winsor, who has lately catalogued this entire collection, in the Harvard University Bulletin, tells us that “at the outbreak of the civil war it was temporarily put in charge of the War Department, placed in an apartment occupied by troops, and barely escaped destruction.”
It was this collection of maps, combined with some ancient narratives and records, that suddenly shook off their dust and became of great practical importance in the Alto Velo case. They furnished successive links of evidence in the strong historical cable which anchored Alto Velo to the Dominican republic. For the sake of consecutiveness we will follow these links in their chronological order.
Starting with the official maps of the United States Coast Survey in current use in 1868, when this investigation was prosecuted, we find, as already noticed in the report quoted, that the island of Alto Velo and those adjoining it were indicated with the accuracy which distinguishes the work of that bureau.
From the Coast Survey report in 1868, we take a leap of seventy-two years to the year 1796. In a map which accompanies M. L. E. Moreau de Saint Méry’s Description Topographical, Natural, Civil, Political, and Historical, of the French part of the island of St. Domingo, published in Philadelphia, 1797, we find that the boundary line between the French and Spanish parts of San Domingo is prominently indicated, and that Cape Beata, the island La Beata, the island of Alto Velo, and the two contiguous islands called Los Frailes are all carefully put down.
On a French war map of San Domingo made during the revolution for independence in Hayti, the dividing line “betwixt the French and Spaniards fixed in 1776” is indicated. Cape Beata, Beata Island, and Alto Velo are all put down as falling within the Spanish part of the island. Alto Velo is here separated from Beata Island by a strait a little less than six miles wide, and is fourteen miles distant from Cape Beata or the mainland of San Domingo.
Pursuing our search back into the period of the purely Spanish occupancy of the island, we have several maps in the Kohl collection which are without date, but all of which antedate our own national existence.
One of these is an ancient chart, by Visconte de Majoli, of the Antilles and the mainland of Honduras and the cape of Santa Maria in Uruguay. Most of the West India islands are delineated ; among them Spagnola and Isabella. We find a projection of the coast corresponding to Cape Beata, and south of it are two islands which correspond to Beata and Alto Velo, but without names.
On another chart, without date, of the same collection, probably of the sixteenth century, Cuba, Bahama, and Spagnola are named and Yucatan is put down as an island. South of “ Spagnola ” we find four small islands, two of which correspond to Alto Velo and Beata, although they are not accurately indicated.
On another ancient chart of the east coast of America from Hudson’s Bay to the Straits of Magellan, the island of Hayti is named Spagnola, and it has several islands on its south side, although they are not named.
A map of the east coast of America from New Brunswick to the Amazon River shows “ Hespanhol ” among the larger West India islands, and adjacent to it three islands, one marked Beata, another “ Frailes,” while the third, corresponding to Alto Velo, is left unnamed. The position of “ Frailes ” is interchanged with Alto Velo.
But we are not left to the probabilities of undated maps, even though some of them are very ancient, or to mere conjectures concerning name and situation. We may follow a chronological path with very definite milestones upon it. In the work of Antonio de Herrera entitled A Description of the West Indies (Descripcion de las Indias occidentales, 1601), there is a map of the Antilles. It was made nineteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth or the slave ship sailed up the James. It gives the outline of the main island with considerable accuracy and records the name of the adjacent islands. Among them we find Beata and Alto Velo, though they are written Sabeata and Altobelo.
Returning to the Kohl collection, we find a copy of an original chart of the West Indies bearing this inscription, “ Thomas Hood made this platte, 1592,” and beneath it a pen and ink flourish, looking very much like a spiral bedspring, which seems to indicate that Thomas Hood was well satisfied with himself and his work. We have since thought that the author would have felt like adding another flourish to his signature if he had known that his putting down the name of Alto Velo would be used two hundred and seventy-six years later to contradict the preposterous claim of two modern navigators to the discovery of this island.
And yet old as is this map, it is modern compared with the evidence that antedates it.
Twenty-eight years earlier we have Paulo Forlano’s map of San Domingo, made in 1564. This is a map drawn on a large scale, and correct proportions are not always observed; but south of the island we find Alto Velo and Beata. Alto Velo is exaggerated in size, but, considering all the experiences it was destined to go through, perhaps not in importance.
In the third volume of Ramusio’s celebrated work (Delle navigationi et viaggi, 1556), we have a map in which the cluster of islands is properly indicated off the southern coast, but the name of Beata is incorrectly given to the island of Alto Velo, while Beata is named Delobos, which was the name of the cape afterward known as Cape Beata.
Going back twenty-two years earlier, to 1534, we come to the oldest engraved map of Hispaniola, which was copied by Kohl from the work of Oviedo. (Libro Primo della Historia, delle Indie occidentale cavate da libri scritti del P. Marted Oviedo. Venezia, 1534.)
This map is one of more accuracy in regard to the subject of our examination than several that followed it. Beata, Alto Velo, and Los Frailes are all given in their proper relation, but only Beata is named.
In 1528 Bordone issued the first edition of his well known Isolario, an attempted description of all the islands of the world. He gives charts of the important Antilles, and among others has outlined Spagnola. The extinct city of Isabella is named upon it, but none of the natural features of the island, its capes, bays, or adjacent islands are named. Nevertheless Beata, Alto Velo, and Los Frailes are all indicated in their proper position.
In the grand ducal library at Weimar are two of the most important and interesting maps relating to this country. One of them is the map of Ribero, made in 1529, the other a map made in 1527, which has been generally attributed to Ferdinand Columbus, though modern critics disallow this claim. Admirable fac-similes of these maps were published by Dr. Kohl in 1860 in his work in German entitled Die Beiden Aeltesten General Karten von America.
Both of these maps are highly illuminated and are good specimens of the beautiful work of that period. In Ribero’s map of 1529 the main island appears under the name Haiti, and the two adjacent islands, Alto Velo and La Beata, are named and marked with distinctness and accuracy. In the map of 1527 the position of both islands is marked, but only La Beata is named.
But we have not yet reached the end of our geographical chain. Old as are these maps of 1529 and 1527, there is still another and older link. In 1832 Alexander von Humboldt, while industriously working in the Paris libraries, during the cholera time, found in the valuable library of Baron Walckenaer what was supposed to be a Portuguese map of the world. The acute eyes of the great geographer discovered in one corner an inscription : “ Juan de la Cosa la fizo en el Puerto de Sta. Maria en ano de 1500.” Near to this inscription was a small colored picture representing Christopher bearing on his back through the sea the Christ child, who held the world-globe in his hand, a happy application of the legend of Saint Christopher to Christopher Columbus, and recalling one of the great objects which he had in mind and heart in his search for the New World: namely, the extension of Christianity to the regions he might discover, and the renewed prosecution of the crusades from the treasures he hoped to acquire.
Humboldt had thus exhumed from a library and published to the world the oldest known map of the New World, and one of the most important in the history of European knowledge concerning it. What has this map made by La Cosa three hundred and sixty-eight years before this controversy to say when placed on the witness stand ? The American portions were first published by Humboldt in the fifth volume of his Examen Critique. They were not given with great exactness, however, in this copy. The two islands are indicated in their proper position, but only Beata is named. The same mistake in copying was made in the copy of the American portions of the map given in Ghillany’s Ritter Martin Behaim, to which Humboldt furnished an introduction. Kohl’s copy of this celebrated map gives the names of both Alto Velo and Beata, and when we turn to Jomard’s Atlas, which reproduces the whole map, we find both islands and both names recorded.
Thus we see that upon seventeen maps, eleven of which are dated, ranging over a period of three hundred and sixty-eight years, from the maps of the United States Coast Survey in 1868, when this investigation was made, to the oldest map of the New World made in 1500, or eight years after the first voyage of Columbus, the island of Alto Velo is clearly indicated either by name or by position, and in most cases by both.
Throughout this examination we are struck with one notable feature: that while most of those early maps show a pardonable ignorance of the proper geographical relations of the New World and some of them jumble things together in promiscuous confusion, yet Alto Velo and its mate Beata are put down with remarkable correctness. There is but one place for them and that is adjacent to Cape Beata or de Lobos, on the southern coast of San Domingo, or Hispaniola, as it was originally called.
The position of this island as laid down in these maps is also confirmed by some of the oldest printed chronicles that we have. Thus in Hakluyt’s Voyages, first published in the year 1599, or two hundred and fifty-seven years before these Baltimore captains discovered Alto Velo, we find minute directions given to the mariner for his voyage from Domingo to New Spain. After giving a course to Puerto Hermoso he says : “ Thence you must stirre away south-southwest untill you looke out for Beata and Alto velo. Beata is a small island and not very high. You may passe along the outside thereof and there is no danger but that you may see ; and by and by you shall raise Alto velo; and from thence you must stirre away west and by south to give a birth from the islands called Los Frailes or the Friers.”
But though we go back to the year 1500 and find the name of Alto Velo on the oldest map of the West Indies known, we have not yet reached the limit of our inquiry. The question at once forces itself upon us: How did Alto Velo get on these maps ? Here is an island about three quarters of a mile long and half a mile wide, a mere dot in the Atlantic, and yet it is one of the points which the earliest geographers fixed with a confident iteration and with almost unvarying consent. The solution is not far to seek. We find it in what seems to be the most interesting and at the same time the most amusing feature of this case. The climax is not reached until we go back to the second voyage of Christopher Columbus and learn that it was a no less distinguished person than the great admiral himself, who discovered this little mote of an island and gave to it the name by which it is still known.
One of the early fruits of the first voyage of Columbus was the discovery of the islands of San Salvador, Cuba, and Hayti. The latter was discovered on the 6th of December, 1492. The cross which Columbus raised on the island on the 12th of December is still shown in the cathedral of San Domingo. A large part of the alluring interest as well as the pathos and tragedy of the first two voyages of Columbus centre in this island, called by the natives Hayti, but to which the Spaniards gave the name of Hispaniola. It was here, on the northern portion of the island, that on the 4th of January, 1493, but a few weeks after its discovery, the admiral built a rude fort and founded his first colony, which out of gratitude for his delivery from shipwreck on Christmas Day, he called La Navidad,
It was here that Columbus returned on his second voyage, on the 27th of November, 1493, with a large and wellladen fleet and numerous followers, only to find that the handful of thirty colonists had been exterminated by the savages in reprisal for their cruel and wanton irregularities. It was on Hispaniola that with a broader foundation he established the city of Isabella, the mother of numerous settlements. It was among the mountains of this island that he assiduously conducted his search for gold, and made with all the pomp he could command an expedition into the luxuriant valleys of this land of promise, the narrative of which forms one of the most charming chapters in the captivating pages of Irving.
Returning from this expedition into the interior, Columbus started on a voyage to the east end of Cuba, during which he discovered the island of Jamaica. After coasting along the south side of Cuba under the delusion that he was on the continent of Asia, he returned to Jamaica and then started east for Hispaniola. On the 19th of August the eastern extreme of Jamaica faded from sight, and on the following day he sighted the long peninsula of Hispaniola known as Cape Tiburon, though the admiral was not aware at first that he was on the southern coast of Hispaniola. During the voyage from Jamaica they encountered boisterous winds and water, and the ships were separated from each other. Proceeding along the coast of Hayti we may imagine the interest which was excited, toward the end of August, when a tall ship under sail was apparently discerned in the distance. Could this be one of the lost vessels of the fleet, or was it some spectre ship upon the ocean ? Gradually, however, the illusion vanished, and the tall ship under sail became a single island or loftyrock which rises from the ocean opposite to the long cape at the south of Hayti. To this cape Columbus gave the name of Cape Beata, and from its resemblance to a high sail, called the island Alto Velo. Rising five hundred feet from the water this island afforded a fine lookout, and Columbus sent several of his seamen to climb to the top to look for the missing ships. The ships were not to be seen, but the seamen, bent on a voyage of conquest, and not belonging to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, killed eight sea-wolves which were sleeping on the sands. The island seemed to be a favorite roost for many pigeons and birds, and the sailors knocked some of them down with sticks, and took some of them by hand.
There were some things that Columbus and his men did not know. They did not know that the presence of these flocks of birds, whose ancestors had probably inhabited this island uncounted years before Columbus discovered it, was to invest it with a commercial value in coming centuries. In their eager search for precious metals they did not know that the deposits on this bellshaped hill could eventually, through the subtle chemistry of commerce, be transmuted into gold. Above all things they were excusably ignorant that this island upon which they had landed was the property of two Baltimore merchants, who were predestined to discover it three hundred and fifty years later.
As we contemplate the audacity of Judge Black in urging the United States government to dispatch a man-of-war to claim this island, we wonder that he did not go a little farther and indignantly indict the sailors of Christopher Columbus for trespass upon property which so clearly belonged to his clients. The time to have employed the army and navy of the United States in regard to Alto Velo was when Columbus and his men invaded it. Unfortunately the United States did not exist at this time, and the great continent of North America had not been rediscovered.
Had Columbus been a Yankee he would not have left Alto Velo without carving his name somewhere on the island during the six days that he anchored by it with his men. The great navigator adopted, however, a more scientific method. He had with him, on this second voyage, a faithful cartographer, Juan de la Cosa, a man who took part in five different expeditions to this continent, two of which he piloted. It is said that Columbus complained that La Cosa boasted that he knew more about the New World than even the admiral. Be this as it may, there is evidence that La Cosa attended to his duties as a chronicler, for when in 1500 he gave to the world the great chart which bears his name, and which Stevens has described as the “ most important and the most authentic geographic monument relating to western discoveries that has come down to us,” Alto Velo was faithfully recorded upon it. As Kohl says, and as we have seen by the maps mentioned, it has been put down on nearly every map of importance since that time.
The discovery of Alto Velo substantially as recited is described by Churchill in his Voyages and Travels, published in London in 1794; it is found in Herrera, and in the earliest records of the voyages of Columbus.
In his third voyage, Columbus, after having made discoveries on the continent of South America, came again to Alto Velo, anchored under the island of Beata, and communicated with his brother, who was acting as viceroy over the island of Hayti.
If we ask how the title to the island of Alto Velo descended to San Domingo the answer is easy. The regions discovered by Columbus, of which the West Indies were the first fruits, inured to the Spanish government. Hispaniola and its adjacent islands remained in the possession of Spain until 1697, when the French had obtained such a footing on the island that Spain was obliged to surrender the western part to France. By the treaty of 1777 a boundary line was fixed between the French and the Spanish portions. After a varied history which it is unnecessary to relate here, the French portion of the island became the republic of Hayti, and the Spanish portion became, in 1844, the republic of San Domingo. By mutual agreement the historic dividing line was accepted between the two republics, and Alto Velo and Beata were therefore in the territory of San Domingo. The political and historic title of San Domingo to the island seems to be without a flaw.
The evidence I have presented was carefully drawn up by Mr. Seward into a report which, with fac-similes of the maps consulted, was submitted to the Senate. Judge Black had been previously able to command much support for his claim. But the evidence which Mr. Seward had marshaled against it was so overwhelming that it was completely crushed. There was but one resource left to him. It was to alter the nature of his plea and maintain that “ claimants under the act of 1856 acquired title not by the discovery of the island, but by the discovery of the guano ! ”
The fallacy of this interpretation of the law is apparent to a school-boy. If San Domingo owned this island it could not forfeit it merely by a failure to utilize it. So long as farmer A.’s hens lay their eggs within the limits of that gentleman’s property, farmer B. can have no excuse for robbing his neighbor’s hen house, or for taking the eggs which he may discover in his neighbor’s fields. “ Certainly,” said Mr. Seward, “ the United States do not forfeit by non-use the coal, iron, copper, and gold which are reported as being so profusely distributed throughout the islands and mainland of Alaska.”
The claim, therefore, was promptly dismissed by Congress. The failure of President Johnson to support Judge Black caused a coolness to spring up between them, and when the impeachment trial took place Judge Black, although he had previously assisted Johnson in preparing his messages to Congress, declined to become one of his defenders in this crisis.
It is gratifying to reflect that the United States in this controversy had a conscience. Just at the close of the war, with an army so great that this island could not quarter a hundredth part of it, with a navy large enough to encircle it, and powder enough in the national magazines to blow it into meteoric dust, the United States was never in better position, if might made right, to commit such an egregious wrong. Judge Black called the eviction of his clients from the island a “ naked robbery,” but what kind of a robbery would it have been if our government had snatched this island from the feeble republic to which it belonged ? Not a “ naked robbery ” indeed, but one clothed in sophistry and shame. The law of conquest gave place to the law of rectitude. It would have been a higher fulfillment of this law if the United States had returned to San Domingo the value of the guano, nine thousand dollars, which its citizens had unwarrantably taken from its treasury.
The Alto Velo case is one of a thousand illustrations of the value which ancient records may acquire in determining not only historic questions, but those of moral and practical importance. We may commend the accuracy and fidelity of La Cosa in writing down the name of Alto Velo when Columbus dropped anchor under its shadow; we may commend the accuracy of the long line of chroniclers and cartographers on whose maps and pages the name and situation of this island were correctly indicated ; but this fidelity would have been of little use had not the memorials of this labor been as faithfully preserved to us. Through the labors of Dr. Kohl in collecting these maps, the Department of State, in addition to the ancient chronicles which it possessed in its library, had the means within its own archives of showing the unfounded nature of this claim. The six thousand dollars spent for these maps was more than saved to the government in relieving it of the cost of a warlike expedition to San Domingo. And what is of still more importance, it was well spent in relieving the United States of the ignominy and the injustice of robbing a feeble power of an island which was one source of income to its needy treasury.
Seven years more will bring us to the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Columbus. The anniversary of that event will give a new impulse to historic study, will bring once more vividly before our minds the intrepid courage, the untiring perseverance, the unquenchable faith of the great explorer. We shall brighten again the jewels on the diadem of his fame. In the dazzling lustre of his great achievements, his humblest discoveries will not be forgotten, and the faithful historian who shall write for us again the story of his second voyage will number Alto Velo among them.
S. J. Barrows.