Admiral Meade’s squadron touched at La Guayra while we were at the capital, the squadron visiting the port at that time in obedience to the schedule already laid out for it in Washington some months previous, just as a theatrical company plays a week’s stand at the time and at the place arranged for it in advance by its agent, but the Venezuelans did not consider this, and believed that the squadron had been sent there to intimidate the British and to frighten the French and German men-of-war which were then expected in port to convey their dismissed ministers back to their own countries. One of the most intelligent men that I met in Caracas, and one closely connected with the Foreign Office, told me he had been to La Guayra to see our squadron, and that the admiral had placed his ships of war in the harbor in such a position that at a word he could blow the French and German boats out of the water. I suggested to one Venezuelan that there were other ways of dismissing foreign ministers than that of telling them to pack up and get out of the country in a week, and that I did not think the Monroe Doctrine meant that South-American republics could affront foreign nations with impunity. He answered me by saying that the United States had aided Mexico when Maximilian tried to found an empire in that country, and he could not see that the cases were not exactly similar. [Illustration: ENGLISH STATION ON THE CUYUNI RIVER Inspector Barnes, Chief of the English Police who were captured by the Venezuelan troops, is seated on the steps]