DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. 163 



an enumeration, with titles when necessary, of the most important 

 documents in each bundle. The text, therefore, furnishes general 

 guidance to a collection of papers numbering between 400,000 and 

 500,000 and, upon a conservative estimate, makes particular or indi- 

 vidual mention of not less than 10,000 of the most important among 

 them. An elaborate index, prepared by Mr. David M. Matteson, of 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts, noted for the preparation of many excel- 

 lent indexes to historical books, extends to nearly 100 pages of print, 

 and makes the whole mass of material readily available to the inquirer. 

 The ''Papeles procedentes de la Isla de Cuba" constitute the main 

 mass of material for the history of Spanish Louisiana and of Florida 

 in the period named, and it is safe to say that this volume alone, if 

 due use is made of it by students, is capable of placing that whole 

 history upon a new basis. On the one hand, the main concerns of 

 provincial administration are fully covered by documents of the first 

 rank, such as the correspondence between the provincial governors 

 and their superiors in office, the Captains General at Havana and the 

 ministers in Spain, while on the other hand the local history of places 

 in the region at which the Spaniards had even the smallest posts can be 

 followed through the aid of the documents left by the officials of that 

 Government, than whom few administrative officials in the world's 

 history have made a more unwearied use of the pen. 



In the last annual report mention was made of a fuller guide to the 

 same material, retained for the present in manuscript, namely, a calen- 

 dar which Mr. Hill had caused to be made of about 143 legajos selected 

 as the most important and embracing itemized descriptions of some 

 58,000 documents. This calendar had been made by him and his 

 clerical assistants at Seville, in duplicate, on two sets of slips. The 

 process of arranging one of these sets of nearly 60,000 slips in chrono- 

 logical order has been begun. It is expected that by means of this set 

 the Department will be able to locate promptly in the Archives, for the 

 benefit of any historical inquirer, any important paper in the collection. 

 The other set remains arranged by legajos, in the order in which the 

 documents themselves are found. 



During the year the photographers acting for the Department, Srs. 

 Hijos de Perez Romero, in Seville, and the photographic printer Mr. 

 L. Doysie of Paris, have completed the set of photographs, embracing 

 3,000 plates, intended to cover the main series of regular official 

 (civil) despatches, found in the Papeles procedentes de la Isla de Cuba, 

 addressed by Spanish governors in Louisiana to the Captain General at 

 Havana, and extending from the arrival of LUloa as governor in 1765 

 to that of Carondelet at the beginning of 1792. Mrs. Adolph Ban- 

 defier, to whom the Department is much indebted for supervision of 

 the work during its progress in Seville, carried out after her return to 

 America the making of a calendar of each of these despatches, copies of 

 which can serve as tables of contents to the collection, and as guides to 



