Il6 REPORTS OF INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



Theoretically every guide to materials in a remote archive should be ac- 

 companied by such a list. If we wish to make it easier for the American in- 

 vestigator to locate those documents important to his purpose which can 

 be found only in that far-off repository, much more should we tell him of 

 those which he can use without leaving his study or the nearest library, or 

 those of which good copies can be consulted somewhere in his own country. 

 Not all copies are good, not all printed texts supersede perfectly the manu- 

 script; the student may still prefer to resort to the latter, but he is entitled 

 to know of the existence of the former. It will not often happen that lists 

 of them can be constructed with the thoroughness which Dr. Robertson has 

 bestowed upon this. In the English, perhaps in the French, case the enor- 

 mous extent of the material would give pause to one planning such a com- 

 pilation. But taking this Spanish volume as it is, its value to history is plain. 

 Quite apart from its use by those intending to inspect or to send for docu- 

 ments in Spanish archives, such a list of accessible original materials for the 

 history of our relations with Spain and of the Spanish portions of our ter- 

 ritory will be indispensable to all the growing number of those who engage 

 in serious study of those subjects. 



Last year's report mentioned the beginning of work upon a proposed calen- 

 dar of papers in Washington archives relating to the Territories. From the 

 opening of the present calendar and fiscal year large progress was made upon 

 it, the compiler being Mr. David W. Parker. It is, of course, the earlier his- 

 tory of the Territories, so important to Western historical societies and work- 

 ers, that we are anxious to illustrate. It is not needful to carry the search 

 beyond 1873, the 3^ear in which the administration of the Territories was 

 assigned to the Department of the Interior; after that date, printed reports 

 abound. Neither is it contemplated — too large a project — to include every 

 paper in Washington archives relating to anything that happened in any 

 Territory — Indian papers, military papers, and the like. By Territorial 

 papers, or papers relating to the Territories, the volume will mean such pa- 

 pers as concern the administration of the Territories as such, or their relations 

 as Territories to the Federal Government. Such papers, anterior to 1873 in 

 date, are chiefly to be found in four places — the Bureau of Rolls and Library 

 in the Department of State, the Bureau of Indexes and Archives in the same 

 Department, the files of the Senate, and those of the House of Representa- 

 tives. 



Mr. Parker labored at the Department of State from January to June, find- 

 ing great masses of papers, of which the majority had probably never been 

 used by any historical inquirer, and finding also that the old arrangement and 

 binding of the papers was marked by so many eccentricities, even in the mat- 

 ter of distribution between the two Bureaus named, that even for the Terri- 

 torial papers in the Department of State alone a calendar was a prerequisite 

 to successful historical use. In June, when the work in that Department was 



