of the refugees to the Yorktown, the legation premises seemed to have been surrounded by police in uniform and police agents or detectives in citizen’s dress, who offensively scrutinized persons entering or leaving the legation, and on one or more occasions arrested members of the minister’s family.  Commander Evans, who by my direction recently visited Mr. Egan at Santiago, in his telegram to the Navy Department described the legation as “a veritable prison,” and states that the police agents or detectives were after his arrival withdrawn during his stay.  It appears further from the note of Mr. Egan of November 20, 1891, that on one occasion at least these police agents, whom he declares to be known to him, invaded the legation premises, pounding upon its windows and using insulting and threatening language toward persons therein.  This breach of the right of a minister to freedom from police espionage and restraint seems to have been so flagrant that the Argentine minister, who was dean of the diplomatic corps, having observed it, felt called upon to protest against it to the Chilean minister of foreign affairs.  The Chilean authorities have, as will be observed from the correspondence, charged the refugees and the inmates of the legation with insulting the police; but it seems to me incredible that men whose lives were in jeopardy and whose safety could only be secured by retirement and quietness should have sought to provoke a collision, which could only end in their destruction, or to aggravate their condition by intensifying a popular feeling that at one time so threatened the legation as to require Mr. Egan to appeal to the minister of foreign affairs.

But the most serious incident disclosed by the correspondence is that of the attack upon the sailors of the Baltimore in the streets of Valparaiso on the 16th of October last.  In my annual message, speaking upon the information then in my possession, I said: 

So far as I have yet been able to learn, no other explanation of this bloody work has been suggested than that it had its origin in hostility to those men as sailors of the United States, wearing the uniform of their Government, and not in any individual act or personal animosity.

We have now received from the Chilean Government an abstract of the conclusions of the fiscal general upon the testimony taken by the judge of crimes in an investigation which was made to extend over nearly three months.  I very much regret to be compelled to say that this report does not enable me to modify the conclusion announced in my annual message.  I am still of the opinion that our sailors were assaulted, beaten, stabbed, and killed not for anything they or any one of them had done, but for what the Government of the United States had done or was charged with having done by its civil officers and naval commanders.  If that be the true aspect of the case, the injury was to the Government of the United States, not to these poor sailors who were assaulted in a manner so brutal and so cowardly.