De Long to the minister of foreign affairs, Lima, Peru, August 19, 1872

Mr. De Long to the minister of foreign affairs, Lima, Peru.

Sir: In the month of May, A. D. 1871, I received a dispatch from the Hon. Secretary of State of the United States advising me that on the 18th of March, 1870, your excellency, on behalf of your government, requested the United States Government to permit its ministers in China and Japan to act as the ministers of Peru with those governments respectively, and further stating “that in view of the friendly relations existing between the United States and Peru I will consequently thank you to attend to any matters which maybe intrusted to your charge by the government of that republic, so far as this can be done compatibly with other instructions from this Department. (Inclosure No. 1.)

On the 20th of June I replied to that dispatch, accepting the trust for your government, (inclosure No. 2,) and immediately afterward I called at the foreign office in Yedo and notified the ministers of foreign affairs of the purport of this correspondence. By a dispatch, dated November 17, 1870, addressed to your excellency, I also notified you of this request of the Secretary of State of the United States and of my reply thereto. In the same communication I tendered my services to your government to negotiate a treaty between the governments of Peru and Japan, and of the absence of any difficulty in securing it. (Inclosure No. 3.)

On the 12th November, 1870, I addressed a note to the ministers of foreign affairs of this empire (inclosure No. 4) in reply to a note received by me that same day from them (inclosure No. 5) relative to a vessel, the bark Cayatte, in which note I advised them, in writing, of my representative capacity for Peru, and claimed that vessel as Peruvian property. By a note addressed to you, of date November 22, 1870, I advised you about this vessel and asked instructions relative thereto. (Inclosure No. 6.)

On the same date I inclosed and forwarded both of the foregoing dispatches to your consul-general in San Francisco, accompanying the same with a note to him informing him of my official character; that the dispatches inclosed were upon official business connected with his government, and requesting him to forward the same to you. (Inclosure No. 7.) In due course of mail I received from Mr. Federico de la Fuento a reply acknowledging the receipt of the letters and promising to forward the same to you by the first opportunity. (Inclosure No. 8.) From none of these communications to your office have I ever received any reply or acknowledgment, which inclines my mind to the belief that they were never received.

The Maria Luz, a Peruvian bark en route from Macao to Callao, having been driven into this port by stress of weather, is now detained here by the Japanese authorities pending some investigations that are being made relative to some charges that have been preferred against her captain. At the time of her arrival, and when these proceedings were commenced, I was absent, and Mr. C. O. Shepard, the chargé d’affaires for the United States Government in Japan, in view of the instructions issued by the honorable Secretary of State of the United States relative to the coolie trade, deemed it incompatible therewith for him to extend any aid or assistance to the officers or crew of this vessel on account of the business they were engaged in, and Captain Heriero had applied to and obtained the counsel and assistance of H. E. Señor Tibrucio Rodriguez y Munoz, chargé d’affaires in Japan for Spain, with whom I have co-operated to the extent of urging upon the Japanese officials the propriety of giving the captain and his officers a fair, speedy, and a public trial, upon the charges preferred against them. I have also urged upon them the very great desirability of their acting justly in view of the friendly relations existing between Peru and their own country. I am watching the proceeding with close attention, and when the investigation is concluded and a judgment rendered, I will, by the first opportunity, advise you fully relative thereto. To this extent I have deemed it my duty and privilege to go.

Trusting to your excellency’s kind approval of my action, I have, &c.,