The scientific expedition of Leon de Cessac to California, 1877-1879

"The story of the French scientific expedition to the Pacific Coast of North America initiated in 1875, and entrusted to Alphonse Pinart and Léon de Cessac, has never been written. Of the two expedition leaders, Cessac alone published a quite brief preliminary report on his own research in California, and Dr. Hamy published a still more summary report based upon some letters sent by the two travellers. The documents collected by Pinart were primarily of a linguistic character and remained unknown in France. Not until 1951 were of the vocabularies collected from the last California mission natives found by chance in the Bancroft Library and published through the efforts of the University of California."