In the confusion which followed the deposition of the Spanish authorities, the public archives appear to have been ransacked with little ceremony, and many documents of great interest were lost, or fell into the hands of individuals who, like collectors of rarities in other parts of the world, showed anything but a disposition to share them with the public at large. I will not say that this was always the case, but the feeling prevailed to a sufficient extent to enhance materially the value of those which were either offered for sale or obtainable by other means. Some few individuals were actuated by a different spirit, amongst whom I ought especially to name Dr. Segurola, the fellow-labourer with Dean Funes in his historical essay upon the provinces of La Plata, whose valuable collection of MSS. (from which that work was principally compiled) was always accessible to his friends, and to whom I have to acknowledge my own obligations for leave to take copies of many an interesting paper. Others, also, whom I do not name, will I trust not the less accept my thanks for the facilities they afforded me for obtaining such information as I required. The government, I must say, was always liberal, in giving me access to the old archives, and in permitting me to transcribe documents[1] which I could not have obtained from other quarters. With these facilities, and by purchase, I found myself, by the time I quitted South America, in possession of a considerable collection of MS. maps and of unedited papers respecting countries of which the greater part of the world is, I believe, in almost absolute ignorance. Amongst the most interesting perhaps of these I may mention-- The original Diaries of Don Juan de la Piedra, sent out from Spain, in 1778, to explore the coasts of Patagonia. A series of papers drawn up by his successors the Viedmas, the founders of the settlements at San Julian and on the Rio Negro. The original Journal of Don Basilio Villariño, who, in 1782, explored the great river Negro, from its mouth in lat. 41° to the foot of the Andes, within three days' journey of Valdivia, on the shores of the Pacific. The Narrative, by Don Luis de la Cruz, of his Journey through the territory of the Indians and the unexplored parts of the Pampas, from Antuco, in the south of Chili, to Buenos Ayres, in 1806. The Diary of Don Pedro Garcia's Expedition to the Salinas, in 1810, given me by my most estimable friend, his son, Don Manuel. Together with a variety of other unpublished accounts of the Indian territories south of Buenos Ayres, principally collected by order of that government, with a view to the extension of their frontiers. The substance of these papers, all which relate to the southern and least known parts of the New Continent, will be found in Chapters VII., VIII., and IX.