No. 215.
Señor Arosemena to Mr. Evarts.
Washington, April 19, 1880.
Sir: I yesterday evening had the honor to receive the very polite note of the 17th instant with which your excellency favored me, in reply to mine of February 13, and April 1 and 15.
The object of that note, in which your excellency reproduced, in substance, the statement made by you to me verbally, in the conference to which you invited me on the 15th, was, on the one hand, to state that my two former notes had not been answered because of the lack of information, since received, concerning the definitive movements of the steamers Adams and Kearsarge, and on the other, to apprise me that those vessels had, indeed, been sent to examine the most suitable points in Chiriqui Bay and Dulce Gulf, for the establishment of coaling stations, for the use of the American Havy.
Your excellency adds that their commanders have found places which they recommend as suitable; these are Shepherd’s Harbor in the bay, and Golfito in the gulf, where a small deposit of coal has already been made, with the consent of the local authorities and that the intention has never been entertained of establishing such stations without the permission of the Government of Colombia, which is on terms of friendship with that of the United States.
I have never thought that the final result of the operations of those vessels could be in the slighest degree hostile to the United States of Colombia, which I represent; and only the manner in which they were dispatched, the alarm produced in the towns of the Isthmus by their arrival, and the delay (which you have just explained) in the reply to my former communications on the subject, would have led me to solicit with so much insistence the explanations which you have been pleased to give me.
[Page 339]I am glad to learn that the honorable minister of the United States of America at Bogotá has received the necessary instructions to adjust this matter in Colombia, in accordance with the desire expressed by the government of your excellency, making such arrangements as the case may require.
I avail myself, &c.,