THE HISTORICAL MAGAZINE, AND NOTES AND QUERIES CONCERNING THE ANTIQUITIES, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY OF AMERICA. VOL. III. NEW YORK: CHARLES B. RICHARDSON. 1859. PREFACE. CLOSING Our third year, we may cast a look behind before entering on another, and, while chronicling the history of others, give a passing glance at our own. The HISTORICAL MAGAZINE AND AMERICAN NOTES AND QUERIES was started with the threefold object of affording Historical Societies a permanent record for their proceedings; historical students and men of letters a medium of intercommunication and mutual information, and the general reader discussions of important historic questions, with curious documents of the past. It cannot be denied that it has supplied a want. It has been received with favor, and men of eminence and research have kindly contributed to its columns. The present volume is not the least interesting of the series; many remarkable articles and papers have here presented new topics for discussion and opened new fields of investigation, many documents of colonial and revolutionary history, of American ethnology and linguistics, have here been first given; but if it has made some progress, we hope in the ensuing year to make it of still more varied interest. A series of papers on the various histories of the several States, and several very curious Diaries of the last century, with further matter from the archives of Spain and Holland will enrich its pages. No country has ever done so much for its history as our own: no people are more devoted students of their national annals. In every form and way we seek to revive and retrace the past. Towns faithfully celebrate their centennial anniversaries; each State, and almost every county and town, has its history; families seek to preserve in permanent form the memory of each member. Our history invites examination; no cloud of fable is needed to shroud our early annals, no mist to distort the vicious into iii |