Page:The Jesuit relations and allied documents (Volume 1).pdf/13

 many archives. It is of necessity a matter of selection. We shall, however, reissue all of the documents usually designated as Relations,—the Cramoisys, the Quebec reissue, the Shea and O'Callaghan reprints; and to these will be added a very considerable collection of miscellaneous papers of importance, from printed sources and from manuscripts, in order to fill the chronological gaps and round out and complete the story. It is the purpose of the Editor to present this mass of selected material in chronological order, so far as proves practicable, and to furnish such scholarly helps as will tend to render it more available than hitherto for daily use by students of American history. To this end will be given an English translation, side by side with the original text. While translations of many of the briefest documents, and of portions of others, have already appeared in one form or other, this is the first attempt to translate the entire body of the Relations. In many cases, where corruptions in text have crept in, we shall be enabled, by recourse to original manuscripts, to restore correct renderings; this care has been taken, wherever practicable, even to the examination of manuscripts in European archives; but occasionally we shall be obliged to follow our predecessors blindly in this regard, either from inability to discover the whereabouts of the original, or to obtain access to it, when found. In the case of each document, we shall invariably state the source whence we obtained our copy, and shall give additional bibliographical data as to other editions known to us. All maps and other illustrations appearing in previous editions will be reproduced in this; and these will be supplemented by other important con-