184 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Prolonged illness prevented Mrs. Catterall from doing any work 

 upon her collection of material for the history of slavery derived from 

 the American judicial reports. As the period reported upon closes, 

 however, she is ready to resume her work. 



MISCELLANEOUS OPERATIONS. 



As heretofore, the editing of the American Historical Review has been 

 carried on in the office of the Department and by its staff. The Ameri- 

 can Historical Association and various other historical organizations 

 have been given such aid as could appropriately be rendered in re- 

 spect to investigations in Washington and other services, and many 

 queries from individuals have been answered. The archives of Wash- 

 ington are still a trackless wilderness. Students remote from Wash- 

 ington can not hope to derive much benefit from them except through 

 the mediation of the staff of this Department, which has by this time 

 acquired a considerable familiarity with the dispersed, ill-kept, and cha- 

 otic deposits which, to our great discredit, are still our substitute for a 

 proper national archive. 



The Department has also gladly made itself useful to historical in- 

 quirers in procuring transcripts from foreign archives, especially, this 

 last year, in the case of Seville and Paris. 



In the matter of the transcripts made in Seville for the Carnegie 

 Institution by the late Dr. Adolph F. Bandelier, not much progress has 

 been made by Dr. Hackett during these eleven months. All the work 

 of copying for the printer and nearly all of the translating having been 

 finished, progress now depends not upon the labor of assistants but 

 upon that of Dr. Hackett himself. It so happens, however, that the 

 resignation of another teacher in the University of Texas practically 

 compelled Dr. Hackett to accept a permanent engagement there as 

 adjunct professor, with new work to organize and, even in the summer, 

 exigencies of the university made it seem important for him to spend a 

 part of the time in Mexico. Therefore, his work of editing the docu- 

 ments and writing the introductions for the several groups into which 

 they have been divided has been greatly held back and is still far from 

 complete. 



