Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

FALKLAND ISLANDS. 237 the unstable foundation of a papal bull, by virtue of which Spain might just as well claim Otaheite, the Sandwich Islands, or New Zealand. As to the pretensions of Buenos Ayres, I shall only re- mark, that in a paper transmitted by her government to Mr. Bayhes, charge-d'afTaires of the United States of North Ame- rica, on the 14th August 1832, the advocate of her claims asserts, that " it is a political absurdity to pretend that a colony which emancipates itself, inherits the other territories which the metropolis may possess. If that singular doctrine were to be found in the code of nations, the Low Countries, for example, on their independence being acknowledged, in 1648, would have succeeded to Spain in her rights to America ; and in the same manner, the United States would have appro- priated to themselves the British possessions in the East-Indies, Inheritance, indeed ! the United States did not inherit the rights of England in Newfoundland, notwithstanding its con- tigviity ; and are they to inherit those which she may have to the Malvinas, at the southern extremity of the continent, and in the opposite hemisphere."'"'* The writer of the preceding sentences, in his haste to attack the United States of America for an assertion made by one of their journalists, to the effect that the United States inherited from Great Britain a claim to fish around the Falklands, must have overlooked the simple fact, that his arguments were even more applicable to Buenos Ayres than they were to the United States of North America. When Captain Jewitt arrived at the Falklands, he found more than thirty sail of vessels engaged there in the seal fishery, besides others which were recruiting the health of their crews after whaling or sealing voyages in the antarctic regions. By the crews of these ships numbers of cattle and pigs were killed, as well as horses, the wild descendants of those taken there by Bougainville and his successors. * Papers relative to the origin and present state of the questions pend- ing with the United States of America on the subject of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). Translated and printed at Buenos Ayres in 1832.