Of course the President was attacked from all sides most bitterly; even those called "the better element" in the Republican and Democratic parties, who had been his ardent supporters, now became his bitter enemies. He was charged with "demagogism" and "jingoism," but he kept sturdily on. Congress, including the great body of the Republicans, supported him; the people at large stood by him; and, as a result, a commission to determine the boundary was appointed and began its work in Washington, the commissioners being, in the order named by the President, David J. Brewer of Kansas, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Chief Justice Alvey of the District of Columbia; Andrew D. White of New York; F. R. Coudert, an eminent member of the New York bar; and Daniel C. Gilman of Maryland, President of Johns Hopkins University. On our arrival in Washington there was much discouragement among us. We found ourselves in a jungle of geographical and legal questions, with no clue in sight leading anywhither. The rights of Great Britain had been derived in 1815, from the Netherlands; the rights of Venezuela had been derived, about 1820, from Spain; but to find the boundary separating the two in that vast territory, mainly unsettled, between the Orinoco and the Essequibo rivers, seemed impossible. The original rights of the Netherlands had been derived from Spain by the treaty of Munster in 1648; and on examining that enormous document, which settled weighty questions in various parts of the world, after the life-and-death struggle, religious, political, and military, which had gone on for nearly eighty years, one little clause arrested our attention: that, namely, in which the Spaniards, despite their bitter hatred of the Dutch, agreed that the latter might carry on warlike operations against "certain other people" with reference to territorial rights in America. These "certain other people" were not precisely indicated; and we hoped, by finding who they were, to get a clue to the fundamental facts of the case. Straightway two of our three lawyers, Mr. Justice Brewer and Mr. Coudert, grappled on this question, one of them taking the ground that these "other people" referred to were the Caribbean Indians who had lived just south of the mouth of the Orinoco, and had been friendly to the Dutch but implacable toward the Spaniards, and that their territory was to be considered as virtually Dutch, and, therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the other disputant insisted that it referred to the Brazilians and had no relation to the question with which we had to deal. During two whole sessions this ground was fought over in a legal way by these gentlemen, with great acumen, the rest of us hardly putting in a word.