6745. What were those grounds?--The inhuman treatment of my boats. I can show the Committee letters from the officers reporting the treatment they had received. The circumstances detailed in those letters were reported to me by the commander of the ship as having occurred some time previously to the destruction of the factories. This is the report of the officer in the boat; he wrote me this letter subsequently to the affair, at my desire, the circumstances having been stated before. He was entrusted with one of the Rolla’s boats. He says, “I stood out for the purpose of reconnoitring, it blowing a strong breeze, with a head sea. I had not proceeded above three miles from the Alexander,” an American brig, “when the boat was unfortunately stove, and it was with great difficulty she was kept afloat by constant baling with three buckets, until we arrived alongside the Alexander, the captain of which vessel kindly allowed us to hoist her on board for the purpose of repairing. Subsequently the captain of the Alexander going on shore to wait on his consignees, they very strongly expressed their disapprobation at his having rendered any assistance to a British cruizer’s boat, and at the same time regretted that he had not left us to sink or swim. Had the captain complied with their wishes, which had been communicated to him previous to this accident, the only resource left us would have been to attempt beaching the boat, which, owing to the boisterous state of the weather, would have been almost impossible, and probably attended with loss of life to all or most of the crew, the bar at the time being perfectly impassable, and not the slightest probability of keeping the boat afloat for any length of time by means of baling.” That is signed by Mr. George Marriott, mate. In consequence of this prohibition, refuge was repeatedly refused to my boats by friendly vessels disposed to succour them, and had any boat subsequently been in the same condition, she would have been left to drown with all her hands. My whole knowledge of this was from the circumstances reported to me by different officers. 6746. Were there other cases of the same nature?--Other cases of the same nature, produced by threats of the persons on shore, which prevented American and French vessels in the roads, otherwise disposed to do so, having done so before, from affording refuge to our boats under almost similar circumstances. But no case was so strong as that of the boat sinking. 6747. Mr. _Forster_.] Were those things done by the authority of the native chiefs, or by the authority of the Spanish slave dealers?--Before I went into the river I had no means of knowing; but I considered that the chiefs of the country were responsible for the treatment of cruizers in their waters according to the law of nations.