DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 163 



work has lain rather in printed than in manuscript sources, and there- 

 fore she has no more than made a beginning of collecting the materials 

 which we desire. In any case, the amount of them in the archives of 

 Edinburgh is not large. 



Of the work which Dr. Francis S. Philbrick kindly undertook for the 

 Department in the Archives of the Indies at Seville, one part was 

 seriously interfered with by the outbreak of war, while the other met 

 with considerable success. It was intended that during his summer 

 months in Seville a series of 2,000 photographs, comprising a certain 

 portion of the despatches sent by the Spanish governor of Louisiana 

 to the captain-general at Havana, should be made in the archives by a 

 firm of photographers in Seville. Since the negatives were to be made 

 on paper, and the kind of paper which we had designated had to be 

 imported into Spain from Germany, the outbreak of the war seemed at 

 first to have prevented its procurement. Later advices seem to show 

 that it finally arrived in Seville, and that the photographs will ultimately 

 be made. Dr. Philbrick having designated all the documents systemati- 

 cally before his departure. The printing of copies, for any subscribers 

 who may desire the series, will be subsequently executed in Paris. 



On the other hand. Dr. Philbrick was able to carry out, to as large 

 an extent as time permitted, the other part of his undertaking, by 

 searching for materials relating to the United States among the papers 

 in that section of the Archives entitled Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 

 and noting systematically what he found. It is understood that the 

 papers of the Audiencia de Santo Domingo stand next to the Cuban 

 series in value for United States history. Though they are primarily 

 records of judicial and administrative cases, and therefore call for a 

 somewhat different treatment from that which Mr. Hill employed in 

 the case of the Cuban series, the method of notation has been made as 

 nearly as possible the same. The mass of papers in this Audiencia is so 

 large, and the material relating to territories now in the United States 

 is so scattered, that only a beginning, a trial exploration, could be 

 made in one short summer. The results will apparently justify fuller 

 and more continuous exploration at a later time. 



In June, Professor William I. Hull, of Swarthmore College, sailed for 

 the Netherlands, to make there an examination of the various Dutch 

 archives and to provide a guide to the materials which they contain for 

 American history. In a month's work he prepared a careful general 

 account of the history, composition, and circumstances of the national, 

 provincial, communal, and ecclesiastical archives of the country, and 

 began a more detailed examination of the archives of the House of 

 Orange, entrance into which was secured for him by the kindness of 

 the American Minister to the Netherlands, Dr. Henry van Dyke. At 

 this point, however, the outbreak of the European war, with the diffi- 

 culties which this made in the prosecution of his work, and with the 



