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760 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Diack, with a white streak, that she had two small guns, and
something like a gun covered up amidships, and that she was
about one hundred and fifty tons burthen. With respect to
the latter item (the amount of tonnage) allowances must bs
made for the state of alarm into which Capt. Butman was
thrown, and Mr. Peyton has told you how difficult a matter
it is to judge of the tonnage of a vessel; he haa told you that
himself and messmates were, in one instance, unable to de
cide within fifty or sixty tons the amount of burthen even of
the vessel in which they were sailing.

Then with regard to the schooner’s armament. The Panda
had two emall guns, and one pivot gun, Perez said the small
guns were six and nine pounders, and Mr. Quentin, naval
officer, made a similar mistake in his estimate of their calibre.
Capt. Butman, however, deseribed the guns as ‘‘neither long
nor short,”’ and a singular corroboration of his opinion has
come out in the course of this investigation. In the roll of
equipage of the Panda, read a few days ago, the small guns
are represented as gunnades, and these pieces are, as Capt.
Butman said, neither ‘‘long nor short guns.”” Is not this
proof of Capt. Butman’s accuracy, of far greater importance
than the mistake which he made in relation to the metal of
the guns? A mistake, too, very easily made; for who has seen
guns at sea in the same state of brightness as those exhibited
in a park of artillery? And who has not noticed the dark
and bronze state of the guns which lie in our navy yard. Re-
member the perfect agreement which existed between the
testimony of the crew of the Mexican and the witness Peres
in relation to the colora of the Panda. Reed, the mate, stated
that when the piratical vessel came up with them she hoisted
patriot colors, And Perez says that when they fired a gun for
the American brig to heave to, they hoisted the Columbian
flag. The description given by Capt. Butman of the manoeu-
vres of the piratical vessel at the time of the Mexican’s cap-
ture, also correspond with Perez’s account of the movements
of the Panda at the same period. There are also numerous
other coincidences between the testimony of the crew of the

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