It is, I presume, chiefly with a view to obtaining authentic evidence concerning this part of our history tiiat you are expected to visit that country. " It would be highly interesting to obtain the originals or copies of the instructions forwarded to the French and English Governors of Canada to learn the views which possessed ;

them, of a commercial, military or colonizing character; their expectations of the future growth of their settlements bordering upon the colony of New-York their expenditures and ;

receipts; the nature and extent of their alliance with the Indian tribes; and the history of their expeditions across the St. Lawrence, and of their posts upon Lake Ontario and the Riv. r Niagara, so far as developed by official reports, or memorials from the foreign departments under whose administration these various operations took place. " It will be equally important to obtain in England the copies of those papers relating to the occupation of the Colony, which are said to have been removed to the mother country,

GENERAL INTRODUCTION. xix

together with such official documents, memoirs and statistical details as were doubtless communicated from time to time to the British government by its agents here. Among these transactions, the conduct of Sir William Johnson, his agency with the Indians, iiis communications to his government, and his views as to the extension of the British power, would be particularly valuable. The expedition of Colonel NicoUs has never yet been known to us in all its details. The capture of the city of Albany, under his orders, has found as yet but a few lines on the pages of the historian. " The Dutch records have furnished us with a vast amount of information relating to the Colony while in subordination to the West India Company; but the official reports of Governors Van Twiller, Stuyvesant, Kieft, &c., to the father-land, and the documents which must necessarily have been communicated from time to time by those zealous agents, are yet to become a part of the materials of our history.