period on Prince Edward Island, made in the 18705 by Pierre Margry, a researcher employed by the Bishop of Charlottetown, Peter Maclntyre. The original transcripts prepared for the Bishop by Margry are held by the Centre d’Etudes Acadiennes (CEA) at the Université de Moncton. However, I have used a typescript of unknown provenance, copies of which are held at both the Musée Acadien at Miscouche and the Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island, as well as at the CEA. From this typescript I have been able to identify other primary sources that were not referred to by either Harvey or Clark.

Two published inventories were useful in identifying the present archival location of the originals of many of the Margry documents, as well as leading to others not found by Margry: the Inventaire Ge’néra/ des Sources Documentaires sur les Acadiens (Anon. 1975) and an lnventaire des Archives des Colonies (Anon. no date), the latter apparently produced by the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) — both of these are available at the CEA at Moncton. Also at Moncton I came across two other collections containing material relevant to the French period on Prince Edward Island: those of Placide Gaudet and of J.-Henri Blanchard. These appear to consist largely of handwritten or typewritten extracts made from material held by the PAC.

Having realised a document to be relevant, in each case I then tried to track down microfilm copies of the original manuscript, using either the microfilm collection at the Université de Moncton (derived from the PAC, and ultimately from the Archives Nationales in France) or microfilms that I borrowed directly from the PAC in Ottawa through the Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island. In this task I was greatly helped by Earle Lockerby, a fellow historian with an interest in the French period, who provided me with reference numbers for almost all of the documents that I was searching for. However, for various reasons it has not been possible to find the original copy for a few of the extracts included in this collection.

Undoubtedly there must exist other relevant documents that I have not come across which may turn up in future. However, as they stand, the extracts are as complete as they can be without going directly to various archives in France, or perhaps Ottawa, and — disregarding the cataloguing and indexing of earlier workers — starting the search process all over again by reading meticulously through all of the records of

the French regime, but that would be a very time- conSuming process for what would be relatively little return.

THE TREATMENT OF THE EXTRACTS

The extraction criteria — From each document I have extracted everything relevant to the topic (as discussed above), as well as enough of the surrounding material to enable it to be put in context.

The French transcription - Each extract is presented in its original French using the actual spelling — which often differs from twentieth century French, especially in the use or non-use of accents — and, as far as possible, the original punctuation. For those documents in which the copy I was using was hand-written, there have been occasional problems in deciphering the hand- writing, and sometimes even in finding a French word that makes sense in the context. This has been exacerbated sometimes by idiosyncratic spelling and the poor quality of some of the microfilms or photocopies. Undoubtedly there may be some errors in my transcription, though this has been considerably lessened by the fact that I have had help from two persons whose mother-tongue is French (see below).

The English translation — In an ideal bilingual world the French transcriptions could be left to stand on their own without translation. However, that would make them of limited use to the majority of persons who are likely to come across this work. Thus translation into English has been deemed a necessity. Despite limitations in my French background (I can read French with a dictionary at hand), I have made most of the translations myself — except for those for which a translation already existed, in which case I have used it, checking carefully however for any errors of previous translators. My procedure has been to render into English the exact meaning of the author without straying too far from the original French, unless this should result in awkward phrasing in English. Where particular words have presented special difficulties in translating I have included the French word in square brackets. I have also in the translations standardised the spellings of the names of persons and places, and have used modern punctuation so as to aid clarity.

However, even when there has been no uncertainty about what an author has written in French, there has sometimes been a difficulty in