162 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION (3F WASHINGTON. 



WORK OF THE PAST YEAR. 

 REPORTS. AIDS, AND GUIDES. 



In June the Institution published for the Department a Guide to the 

 Materials for .Vinerican History in the Archives of Switzerland and 

 Austria, in which the main portions, relating to the archives of the 

 German cantons of Switzerland, and to those of Austria, were prepared 

 by Professor Albert B. Faust, of Cornell University, after a careful 

 examination of those archives extending through several months in 

 1913, wliile the portion relating to the archives of the French cantons 

 of Switzerland rests upon investigations made by the Director of the 

 Department. The volume is one of 299 pages and has a full index. 

 It describes the archives and what they contain for American history 

 with fulness of detail, and in the manner deemed most useful to 

 students of that history. Swiss and Austrian emigration to America, 

 in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ha\'ing formed a 

 highly important element in the Gennan movement toward America, 

 and having contributed a large element to our Gennan-American 

 population, it is expected that students of that movement will find the 

 book valuable, and indeed reviews of it already pubhshed have testified 

 to such esteem. Mr. Faust has himself presented to the public some 

 of the chief results that may be derived from the data discovered by 

 him, through a valuable article in the American Historical Review for 

 October 1916, entitled ''Swiss Emigration to the United States in the 

 Eighteenth Century," and accompanied by a body of interesting 

 docmnents from the Swiss archives printed in extenso. Genealogical 

 societies interested in the early Gennans in America have manifested 

 interest in his discoveries from another point of view. 



As the year reported upon is coming to its end, the Institution is 

 on the point of publishing, in a volume of 594 pages, a Descriptive 

 Catalogue of the materials for United States history in that section of 

 the Archives of the Indies, at Seville, which is called "Papeles proce- 

 dentes de la Isla de Cuba," prepared by Mr. Roscoe R. Hill, now 

 professor of history in the University of New Mexico. The text of this 

 book, planned by Mr. Hill at the beginning of his labors to consist of 

 500 pages, and actually consisting of ahnost exactly that number, takes 

 up in numerical order the 934 legajos, or bundles, in this section of the 

 Archives of tlie Indies, relating to the history of the United States, 

 chiefly in the period between 1763 and 1819, and gives a methodical 

 description of each. This description, averaging about half a page 

 of print in the case of each legajo, gives in full the title or designation 

 borne by the legajo, its size, and the number of documents which it 

 contains, exact infonnation concerning the dates which it covers and 

 the distribution of the papers within those dates, a general description 

 of its organization, or subdivisions, with statements as to writers 

 and persons addressed and as to the main subjects touched upon, and 



