as Venezuelan territory, had lasted for half a century. The territorial claims, originally those of the Spanish Empire, inherited by Venezuela after its independence in 1830, and of the Dutch Empire, inherited by the United Kingdom with the acquisition of the Dutch territories of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice in 1814, had remained unsettled over previous centuries. Over the course of the 19th century, Britain and Venezuela had proved no more able to reach an agreement until matters came to a head in 1895, after seven years of severed diplomatic relations. The basis of the discussions between Venezuela and the United Kingdom lay in Britain's advocacy of a particular division of the territory deriving from a mid-19th-century survey that it had commissioned. That survey originated with German naturalist Robert Schomburgk's four-year expedition for the Royal Geographical Society in 1835 to 1839, which resulted in a sketch of the territory with a line marking what he believed to be the western boundary claimed by the Dutch. He was thus commissioned by the British government to carry out a survey of Guiana's boundaries. The result was the "Schomburgk Line", which he established partly to follow natural divisions and partly to distinguish territory of Spanish or Venezuelan occupation from that which had been occupied by the Dutch. The line went well beyond the area of British occupation and gave British Guiana control of the mouth of the Orinoco River. In 1844, Venezuela declared the Essequibo River the dividing line; a British offer the same year to make major alterations to the line and cede the mouth of the Orinoco and much associated territory was ignored. No treaty between Britain and Venezuela was reached, and after an 1850 agreement not to encroach on disputed territory, the matter largely rested until 1876, when diplomatic exchanges resumed. Schomburgk's initial sketch, which had been published in 1840, was the only version of the "Schomburgk Line" published until 1886. That led to accusations by US President Grover Cleveland that the line had been extended "in some mysterious way". In October 1886, Britain declared the line to be the provisional frontier of British Guiana, and in February 1887 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations. Proposals for a renewal of relations and settlement of the dispute failed repeatedly, and by summer 1894, diplomatic relations had been severed for seven years, the dispute having dragged on for half a century. In addition, both sides