e question of the boundary
line. This statement will, we presume, satisfactorily account for the
presence in his collection of such papers as do not relate to the
subject upon which he was engaged. That he was well qualified to select
such papers is evident from an examination of the list which he made
out.

During the occupation of the State capital building by the Federal
troops and officials, after the surrender of the Confederate authorities
in April, 1865, a very large quantity of the official documents filed in
the archives of the State were removed from that building, and at the
same time four of the nine volumes and the portfolio of maps above
mentioned. Nothing has been heard from any of them since. In 1870, the
question of the boundary line being again before the Legislature of
Virginia, the Governor sent the Hon. D.C. De Jarnette upon the same
errand that Colonel McDonald had so well performed, and the result was
the obtaining of such papers as he could find relating to the subject
under consideration, including duplicates of some of those which though
useful in this connection, are included in the five volumes remaining of
those collected by Col. McDonald; also, charters of great length, but
which are to be found in print in the histories and statutes of the
State, and many of the miscellaneous papers which Colonel McDonald had
copied under the circumstances above named. Among the latter is the
account of the first meeting of the Assembly at Jamestown in 1619. When
Colonel McDonald visited the State Paper Office (as it was then called)
in 1860, this great repository of historical materials had not been
thrown open to the public, and he tells us in his report that it was
"twenty days after his arrival in London before he could obtain
permission to examine the archives of the State Paper Office." A year or
two afterwards all of the restrictions which had existed were removed,
the papers arranged chronologically, and an index made by which they
could be referred to. Farther, W. Noel Sainsbury, Esq., one of the
officers of what is now called the Public Record Office, had published a
calendar of all the papers relating to the British colonies in North
America and the West Indies, from the first discoveries to 1660 (soon be
followed by another coming down to the period of the independence of the
United States), which contains a brief abstract of every paper included
in the above named period, so that enquirers upo