Abundant details as to the quarrels of D’Aulnay and La Tour are in Winthrop’s _History of New England_; and many of the original documents, most of them in contemporaneous translations, are in the seventh volume of the third series of the _Collections_ of the Massachusetts Historical Society. From the first of these sources Hutchinson, in his _History of Massachusetts Bay_, drew largely, as did Williamson in his _History of Maine_, both of whom devoted considerable space to Acadian affairs. For some of the later transactions Hutchinson is an original authority of unimpeachable weight.[425] The Massachusetts writers are also naturally the sources of most of our information regarding the expedition of 1654, though Denys and Charlevoix touch upon it, and the modern historians of Nova Scotia treat it in an episodical way. The articles of capitulation of Port Royal are in _Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France_, ii. 107. Among the later French writers the pre-eminence belongs to the Jesuit Father, Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, who had access to contemporaneous materials, of which he made careful use; and his statements have great weight, though he wrote many years after the events he describes. His _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_ follows the course of the French throughout the continent, and scattered through it are many notices of the course of events in Acadia, but its more particular characterization belongs to another chapter. The papers drawn up by the French and English commissioners to determine the intent of the treaty of Utrecht have a controversial purpose, and on each side are colored and distorted to make out a case. In them are many statements of facts which need only to be disentangled from the arguments by which they are obscured to have a high value. No one, indeed, can have a thorough and accurate knowledge of Acadian history who does not make constant reference to these memorials and to the justificatory pieces cited on the one side or the other. They stand, when properly sifted and weighed, among the most important sources for tracing the history of the province.[426] The episode of Sir William Alexander and his futile schemes of colonization is treated exhaustively by Mr. Slafter in a monograph on _Sir William Alexander and American Colonization_, which reproduces all the original charters and other documents bearing on his inquiry, and apparently leaves nothing for any future gleaner in that field.[427] But, like many other persons who have conducted similar investigations, it must be conceded that Mr. Slafter attaches more importance to Sir William Alexander’s somewhat visionary plans than they really merit. They were ill adapted to promote the great object of western colonization, and they left no permanent trace behind them.