178 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Inevitably, however, this task falls into two parts : to deal with the 

 archives in the islands, and to deal with the papers relating to the 

 islands in the imperial Public Record Office in London ; for the archives 

 in the islands have suffered such losses by reason of hurricanes, earth- 

 quakes, volcanic eruptions, peculiarities of climate, the ravages of 

 insects, and occasionally by warfare, that some of the most important 

 series are found more complete in the Public Record Office than in the 

 islands, the colonial governors having been required by their instruc- 

 tions to transmit copies of these series to the home government. The 

 transcripts which went to London are in almost all cases still there, 

 while the originals which remained in the islands have often perished. 

 Thus the two collections are mutually complementary. Many of the 

 series in the islands are to be found nowhere else, copies of them not 

 having been transmitted to London; there are, as in the case of the 

 continental colonies, many sorts of colonial documents in London 

 that are not to be found in the islands ; and some of the most important 

 series are to be found both in the islands and in London, but as a rule 

 much more complete in the latter case. 



Under such circumstances we have, as has been intimated above, two 

 tasks to perform: the exploitation of the archives of the British West 

 Indies, and that of the various series relating to them in the Colonial 

 Office papers in the Public Record Office in London. A beginning of 

 the former task was made in September and October 1916, when Mr. 

 Luis Marino Perez, librarian of the Cuban House of Representatives, 

 prepared for the Department a full and careful report upon the archives 

 of the island of Jamaica. But the war, submarine activities, and the 

 scattered state of the Lesser British Antilles made it inexpedient to 

 continue. In June of the present year, however, it became possible 

 for Professor Herbert C. Bell, of Bowdoin College, who had long ago 

 been engaged for the work and was now released from military service, 

 to attack the London portion of the problem. Proceeding to London, 

 and permitted by the kindness of the president of Bowdoin College 

 to prolong his absence a little beyond the autumnal opening of the 

 college, he has been able to collect most of the essential materials for a 

 summary inventory of the West Indian portion of the Colonial Office 

 papers to the year 1775. Of the chief series, those called "Original 

 Correspondence" and "Entry-books," he has himself prepared the 

 inventories. For some other series, having more of a routine char- 

 acter, clerical aid was invoked and was adequate. For the series of 

 "Sessional Papers," chiefly journals of councils and legislative assem- 

 blies, Messrs. B. F. Stevens and Brown supplied the skillful aid of 

 Miss Edith Moodie, who some years ago prepared for the American 

 Historical Association its excellent catalogue of journals in London of 

 the thirteen colonies which subsequently formed the United States. 

 This part of the work is not yet completed, but will no doubt be finished 



