Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/187

stated that "Colonial Tracts, issued monthly, is designed to offer in convenient form and at a reasonable price some of the more valuable pamphlets relating to the early history of America which have hitherto been inaccessible to the general public, although of so much importance to the historical student."

As a matter of fact the Humphrey publication is nothing more than a miserable reprint of the well-known work of the Hon Peter Force, whose library now forms a part of the United States' Library of Congress, at Washington, D. C. In 1836 Mr. Force published his first volume of "Tracts and other Papers, relating principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America." The pieces of this first volume were also included, in 1839, in the first volume of the "Transactions of the American Historical Society," of Washington. The fourth and last volume of his "Tracts" appeared in 1846, and the entire pubcation comprises about 52 pieces.

Force's volumes were and are still an important accession to any library; but everyone familiar with them knows that they are not always absolutely accurate. Mr. Humphrey has not only embodied Force's errors, but he has introduced a mass of others. Force endeavored to give the text of the originals, but Humphrey has "modernized" it—though he nowhere intimates that he has done so. For example, in No. 2 Force gives "Cussetaho", while Humphrey gives "Cusstaho"; in No. 4 neither Force nor Humphrey gives the title-page correctly, and on p. 77 Force omits "600" before "white People", and again "3000" before "Pack-horses"—both of which Humphrey (p. 86) also omits, though the figures are clearly given in the original edition.

Force in his prefatory remarks to his first volume of "Tracts" says: "Of the thirteen Tracts