An answer was promptly returned, authorizing me to make the researches I wished, without limitation; and adding, that " all the facilities he can desire will be accorded" to the Agent. I will only remark, in passing, that this liberality did not prove to be mere formal phrase. " ' In further prosecution of the duties of my mission, I accordingly went to Paris in June, 1842, and commenced my examinations in the archives of the Marine and the Colonies. The general management of the French dependencies in America having been from an early period entrusted to this department, its archives are very rich in materials relating to their history. They consist chiefly of instructions of the French government to its agents in America letters ;

and dispatches to the King and his ministers, and original papers from the Colonial authorities to the Home government; correspondence with the neighboring English Colonies; reports of interviews with the Indian tribes; plans of campaigns and details of battles and skirmishes, &c., &c. "' The documents relating to Canada and New-York are contained in two several divisions. The one is a series of bound volumes, commencing with the year 1663 and ending very abruptly with 1737. It comprises about 70 volumes, and contains the dispatches and commissions of the King and his ministers to the Governors and other functionaries in the French Colonies. It is greatly to be regretted that the volumes subsequent to 1737 appear to be missing. The other, and by far the most fertile repository, is a series of upwards of an hundred enormous "cartons" or port-folios, each larger than two ordinary folio volumes, and in which, at the time of my examination, were placed loosely and without chronological order, or even the least attempt at arrangement, a mass of original documents relating to Canada, from 1G30 to the Treaty of Paris, 10th February, 1763.