DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 115 



United States history. Those of the civil province of Quebec have some 

 importance, and the volume should doubtless include some account, such as 

 the great courtesy of their custodians may permit (though the collection is 

 not a public one), of the ecclesiastical archives preserved at the palace of the 

 archbishop and Laval University. It is probable that, by arrangement with 

 a gentleman who has fairly complete notes on the archives of the British 

 West Indies, we may complete the volume for British America by including 

 those islands, together with the Bahamas, on whose archives we already by 

 chance have a report, and the Bermudas. 



The series of preliminary guides to American materials in European 

 archives, projected eight years ago, is by no means completed, as to issue or 

 even as to planning. The archives of a dozen European countries — Scot- 

 land, Ireland, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, 

 Switzerland, Austria-Hungary, Portugal — remain untouched. Yet, most of 

 these being of minor importance, the time may well be said to have arrived 

 for advancing from the first stage of exploitation of foreign archives to the 

 second stage. That stage consists in selecting a particular section of some 

 single European archive and subjecting to more explicit treatment, in the 

 form of a calendar, the American materials which it contains. The section 

 chosen should have the highest claim to consideration on account of the 

 abundance, importance, and freshness of its American papers. So much 

 more has been done to make known the American materials in the English 

 and French archives that I conclude upon selecting for this fuller treatment 

 a portion of the Spanish archives, whose riches are much less familiar and 

 have been much less drawn upon. After consultation with Professor Shep- 

 herd, compiler of our "Guide to the materials for the history of the United 

 States in Spanish archives," and with others, it seems to me plain that the 

 most desirable section to attack in the manner described is that body of 

 papers in the Archives of the Indies at Seville entitled "Papers from the 

 Island of Cuba" ("Papeles procedentes de la Isla de Cuba"). It is a collec- 

 tion of about 2,500 bundles (legajos), embracing some hundreds of thou- 

 sands of individual papers, sent from Havana to the Archives of the Indies 

 in 1888. The dates run from the middle of the eighteenth century to the 

 middle of the nineteenth. Because of the administrative position of the 

 captain-general of Cuba, in that period, this deposit contains a vast number 

 of papers from places in the present territory of the United States which 

 were formerly dependent upon Havana — from Florida, Louisiana, and the 

 Old Southwest in general — and not a few from portions of our territory once 

 subordinate to the viceroy of New Spain. The collection as a whole, says 

 Professor Shepherd (Guide, p. jj), is of great value. 



Its assortment of English and French originals, of which comparatively 

 few appear elsewhere in translation, and its copious mass of documents in 

 Spanish as well, not only provide the materials for a detailed study of 

 Louisiana and Florida under Spanish rule, but they contribute also in high 

 degree to a correct understanding of the relations between the United States 

 and the dominions of Spain in North America and the West Indies. 



