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The first volume of this unique publication has been completed, and twelve rare and important tracts, writen by the founders of the English colonies in America, have been reprinted from original copies, in monthly parts, and placed in the hands of the reading public. The publication, though modest in conception and detail, is a most important historical contribution, and will be valued for the vast store of English colonial history it will contain. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a large number of tracts relating to America were printed in England, but only a few copies of any of these have escaped the vicissitudes of time, and those few were almost inaccessable to the large number of readers interested in historical and social studies.

The twelve tracts comprising the volume represent the golden and romantic age of English colonial adventure—a period so fraught with momentous consequences to the English race. The earliest of these tracts were printed in 1609 and the latest in 1742, and while representing a diversity of opinion among the writers, yet all make the advancement and glory of England the predominant motive that influenced the writers, and guided the enterprises which they advocated with unbounded faith and enthusiastic zeal.

Five of the tracts relate to the history and colonization of Georgia and Carolina, five to Virginia, one to New England, and one to the Propagation of the Gospel in America and the West Indies, all dealing with the difficult phases of colonization present in those early days. Grandly, and even quaintly, as many of these