Dundas was chaplain to the first Anglican Bishop of British Columbia, Canada, and together the papers give a full account of missionary activity and relations with the Indigenous population, and of his own journey to and from North America. Dundas is particularly significant because of a collection of Tsimshian art he acquired as a result of a visit to Metlakatla, in northern British Columbia, which is now housed at the Royal BC Museum, Victoria. The papers consist of eleven volumes of extracts from letters of Dundas to his family, 1859-1865, understood to have been compiled by one of his sisters, three journals kept by Dundas, 1863 and 1865, including an account of his visit to Metlakatla in 1863, and a photograph album from the same period.