182 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



the archives of those ministries which have not yet deposited their 

 papers in the Archives Nationales. 



The work upon which Mrs. Surrey has been engaged, the making 

 of a catalogue of Documents in Paris Archives relating to the History 

 of the Mississippi Valley, is in practice an adjunct to the work of Mr. 

 Leland and Mr. Doysi^ reported upon in the preceding paragraphs, 

 though it has a separate history and origin. That history has been 

 recounted in previous reports, but needs to be borne in mind, since 

 only in the light of that history can one explain the reasons for select- 

 ing, for fuller treatment by way of catalogue, one portion of the larger 

 field covered by the researches in Paris of Mr. Leland and Mr. Doysi^. 

 During the year Mrs. Surrey has written 4,047 cards from the notes 

 taken by those gentlemen, making a total, thus far, of 24,308 cards. 

 She has now dealt with all the material in the archives of the Ministry 

 of Foreign Affairs and with most of that in the Ministries of the 

 Marine and of the Colonies. This leaves, as yet to be done, the lesser 

 groups of documents in the Bibliotheque Nationale and the minor 

 libraries, in the Ministry of War, and in the Archives Nationales. 

 Mrs. Surrey spent about a month in Washington in the spring, going 

 over with Mr. Leland the notes which she has not yet dealt with, 

 and will be able to proceed with these in his absence, and with those 

 which he or Mr. Doysi6 may in addition make during the coming 

 year. Meantime it is not impossible for historical scholars to make 

 some use of the catalogue, though still in process of compilation, and 

 this has been done, in two important instances, during the past year. 



Mr. Van Laer's state of health, and the engrossing duties of his 

 position as archivist of the State of New York, have not permitted 

 him to finish the manuscript of his report on the materials for Ameri- 

 can history in the archives of the Netherlands, for which the needful 

 notes were taken during the expedition which he made to those 

 archives, on behalf of the Institution, in the spring of 1919. Some 

 progress has, however, been made, and more is likely to be made in 

 the month immediately succeeding the date of this report. 



Professor Bell, spending the summer in London, has resumed the 

 work in the Public Record Office upon which he spent the summer of 

 1919, the work, namely, of preparing a fuller description than has 

 heretofore been given of the West Indian section of the Colonial 

 Office Papers, to be combined later with a full inventory of the ar- 

 chives of the West Indian Islands themselves, these two classes of 

 papers being mutually complementary and both alike necessary to 

 a proper understanding of the history of that British colonial empire 

 of which the Thirteen Colonies formed only a part. 



Mr. Bell, during that portion of the summer which he spent in the 

 work of the Department, completed all branches of his survey of the 

 West Indian papers to the year 1775. From that point on, the inven- 

 tory, which it is proposed to carry to 1815, should properly take on a 

 different character, calling for a somewhat different procedure. The 



