would facilitate the poor American to get his papers in such a shape as would enable him to return to Cadiz and discharge his cargo.

All efforts at conciliation were unavailing. Blanco had the power to annoy, and he was not magnanimous enough to forego it.

The Neapolitan, Swedish and Belgian consuls were kind enough to call on him in order to explain what had been the usage at Tangier, and to appeal to his sympathies in behalf of the master of a vessel so far from his own country, and whose cargo had been shipped for a Spanish market. These gentlemen met with no success. Blanco persisted in his demand, and also for the dismissal of the sanitary officer. The Board decided against his demands, and he sent in his resignation as a member of that body. Pending the acceptance of his resignation, he called on the President of the Board, Mr. Reade (a son of the late Gen. Sir Thomas Reade, second in command at the Island of St. Helena when Napoleon was a prisoner there), and expressed his profound regret at the course he had pursued towards the Republican. He said he was satisfied the papers of the Republican entitled her to pratique; that he had been led into error through a letter received from Cadiz; that by his resignation as a member of the Board he had placed himself in a false position, not only with the Board itself, but with his own Government; that he had to express his gratification for the courtesy extended toward him, and that if a little path ("un caminito") could be opened for him, he would most cheerfully withdraw his resignation. The President then called on me, and said:

"Mr. Brown, we have carried our point-our courtesy, which Blanco referred to, has floored the Don. He admits his folly, he will of course grant his visa, and it devolves on you to open the way for his return."

I cheerfully consented to do it. I expressed in the circular the pain I had experienced at the announcement that we were to lose the valuable counsels of our honored colleague of Spain, and the regret that the arrival of a vessel from my own country should have been the cause; that I trusted he would be induced to reconsider his resolution and reflect that

in his resignation not only would the Board be deprived of the aid and assistance of an important member, but that the Government of Her Catholic Majesty would learn with regret that Spanish influence in the sanitary regulations of the empire of Morocco, a near neighbor, had been materially weakened by the resignation referred to of the diplomatic agent of Spain.

This was all gammon, of course, for Don Juan had but lately arrived; had had no experience, and was far more likely to obstruct than assist us in regulating the sanitary affairs of the empire. But I wanted his visa, and my colleagues wanted it quite as much as I did, for I had always cheerfully aided them in extricating from similar difficulties the vessels of their countrymen, and this was the first occasion they had been afforded to reciprocate. They therefore followed me in the circular, in the same eulogistic strain, and the Swedish Consul issued invitations for a soirée that evening, at his consulate, in order to bring us all together and smooth over the little asperities that had been occasioned by this the first interruption, for a number of years, to our usual harmony. Blanco did not attend.

Judge of our surprise, on reading in the circular, the following day, a lengthy and pompous effusion from Blanco, to the effect, that the urgent solicitations of his honored colleagues to withdraw the resignation he had felt it his duty to tender, placed him in a very painful position; on the one side was his duty, a duty which nothing could prevent him from performing; on the other the urgent solicitation of his associates not to withdraw from them his counsels in the regulation of the sanitary affairs of Morocco; that he had given the subject the most serious reflection, and he had decided to accede to the wishes of his colleagues and withdraw his resignation, which he now did, insisting at the same time that the American schooner Republican be ordered out of the bay-a courtesy which, he said, was due to the Government of Spain, whose authorities had decided not to admit her; and a severe reprimand to be administered to the sanitary officer.

A very disagreeable controversy, the only one in which I

participated during my long residence in Morocco, then ensued. I recapitulated the verbal statements of Blanco at his interview with the President of the Month. I said that an imposition on the Board had been practiced by some one, and I called on the President for an explanation. He replied by repeating the conversation at the personal interview, thus showing up Blanco to be a consummate humbug. Others participated in the controversy. Blanco lost temper, hazarded a menace, which being met in a proper spirit, he retired from the field humbled and discomfited, and was ever afterward known under the soubriquet of "The Valiente."

Failing to obtain the Spanish visa, the Republican sailed for Vigo, a port 1,000 miles distant from Tangier, and I forwarded a complaint with a copy of the correspondence, to Mr. Preston, our Minister at Madrid. Wishing to get rid of Blanco, the British Chargé, Sir John Drummond Hay, who returned from abroad during the controversy, enclosed to Mr. Buchanan, the British Minister at Madrid, a copy of the correspondence about the Republican, expressing at the same time a hope that he would coöperate with Mr. Preston in bringing the affair to the notice of the Spanish Government.

This was done. Mr. Preston and Mr. Buchanan proceeded together to the Foreign Office, and in the interview with Calderon de la Barca, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, that gentleman expressed his annoyance at the discourteous and captious proceedings of Blanco, promised to give the subject prompt attention and lost no time in doing so.

It so happens that I have in my possession, the original despatch received from Mr. Preston after that interview, and after his addressing Marshal O'Donnell on the subject. During the war between Spain and Morocco, the foreign representatives were all obliged to escape to Gibraltar. My personal effects and the papers of the Government were all hastily placed on board a lateen, which ran on a sunken anchor in the bay of Gibraltar, filled and went down before the property could be got off. The papers and effects were subsequently recovered, but in such a confused state, that

private and official papers were found huddled together. Thus it came into my hands.*

In conclusion, I have to add that Señor Don Juan Blanco was subsequently withdrawn from Tangier, and satisfactory explanations tendered to Mr. Preston, who subsequently addressed to me a despatch to the effect that if I would forward to him a statement of the losses incurred by the master of the Republican, in consequence of the unwarrantable interference of the Chargé d'Affaires of Spain, in Morocco, he would recover the amount and transmit the same to his address. Capt. Coville was then in Cadiz and I addressed him to that effect, but he replied through Messrs. Bensusen & Co. of that city, that he had already given me a great deal of trouble, and that although thankful to me for this additional evidence of friendship, he declined troubling me any farther. I reported to Mr. Preston the reply of Capt. Coville, and thus the affair ended.

The Republican, having to beat all the way, was fourteen days in making the passage from Tangier to Vigo, the lazaretto of Spain. By the time she reached Vigo, Mr. Preston had made his complaint to the Spanish Government, and orders had been transmitted to Vigo not to detain the Republican, but to advise the captain to return to Cadiz. On the third day she therefore sailed for Cadiz, but being absent one month, the market for staves had in the meantime fallen $25 a thousand, and the cargo had to be disposed of at $95 per thousand for pipes and $75 per thousand for hogsheads.

The Republican then left Cadiz with a load of salt, was overtaken by the equinoctial gales, and, after being disabled, ran 800 miles to Fayal, one of the Azores, where she was detained two months repairing. That brought it so late that she could not return home via Quebec, and Capt. Coville was consequently obliged to proceed to New York. Half his salt having been washed out, he took on at Fayal, at an enormous freight, 2,000 boxes of oranges, and made between Fayal and New York, the quickest passage on record.

*The despatch does not appear to have been deposited with the MS. of this narrative in the keeping of the Buffalo Historical Society; at any rate it has not been found.

The Republican then conveyed a general cargo of merchandise to Mobile; returned to New York; sailed again for Mobile, and was wrecked on the Great Abico, one of the Bahama Islands, some seventy-five miles from Nassau. Capt. Colville succeeded, however, in getting out his cargo which he disposed of at Nassau.

Thus ends my sketch of the diplomatic controversy occasioned by the visit of a gallant little craft from Lake Erie, with a Buffalo master, to the shores of the Don and the Mussulman, and her subsequent fate.

NOTE-The foregoing narrative is a portion of an unpublished manuscript which has been in the possession of the Buffalo Historical Society for forty years. When it was written, in 1863, considerable attention was being paid to the development of trans-Atlantic trade in vessels from the Great Lakes. That portion of Mr. Brown's paper which we do not publish, discusses at length the possibilities of this trade, contingent on the condition of the Welland Canal and St. Lawrence route. For many years American-built vessels had found ready sale at the principal European ports, and at many a port on the Great Lakes vessel builders thought they saw prospective profits in sending home-built craft to Europe, even though there was no return voyage. The Lily of Kingston was the first vessel that passed down from the lakes to the ocean, bound for a European port. This was about 1847. She afterwards sailed in the Quebec and Liverpool trade, but was lost, it is believed, on her third ocean voyage. Prior to 1857 very few vessels passed down, via the Welland Canal and St. Lawrence, bound for Europe. The manuscript under notice gives a list of fifty-nine vessels which cleared from lake ports for Atlantic and European ports, between 1847 and 1860. Most of them sailed to Glasgow, Liverpool and London. In 1860 the Messenger cleared from Buffalo, the Pierson from Milan, O., the Massillon and Valeria from Cleveland and the Scott from St. Joseph, all for European ports. Several lake-built vessels engaged for a time in trade on the Meditteranean and the Danube, and then returned to the lakes. Prior to 1863, Norwegian craft had come into the upper lakes, and returned with outward-bound cargo; and English railway iron had been unloaded on the Buffalo docks direct from the ships into which it had been loaded at Liverpool. The lakeocean trade did not prove as profitable as some of the ship builders and lumber dealers had anticipated, and for many years, except in sporadic cases, it practically ceased to exist.