built at a distance from the factories, and men to watch it, to prevent the home Indians from stealing it. They must also have men to cultivate it, which would be very expensive. The witness cannot determine whether it would not be more so than having their corn from Europe, and he thinks the Company would sow it, if it were for their advantage.” Mr. John Hayter, another witness, said that he had been house carpenter to the Company six years at Moose river, three years at Churchill, and six months at Albany, and knew that no other trade was carried on there but that of furs. He had seen good barley grow at Moose river, and helped the person who grew it to dig his ground and sow it. It produced about the quantity of half a bushel, which he saw rubbed out. The ear was large, and yielded as well, in the opinion of the witness, as the barley sown on common ground in England. Some of the seed was sown the next year, and it grew again but the witness did not see the produce of it. The person who grew this corn told him the reason why he discontinued sowing corn was that the Governor hindered him. Witness further said that he had made hay at Moose river. Mr. Edward Thompson, who had been three years at Moose river in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s service as surgeon, being required to give an account of the commodities, soil and climate there, before the committee, said that the chief commodities were the furs of the beaver, the marten, the fox and the bear. He testified that he had seen better barley and oats grow at Moose river than ever he saw in the Orkneys, but the quantity sown was but very small. The seed would bear sowing again, but diminished in goodness. There was suitable enough ground for this corn, but never any encouragement given for sowing it, but quite the reverse, the Governor absolutely forbidding it, for no other reason, as the witness apprehended, but that if corn had been sown, a colony would soon have been erected there, and he could not say whether that would be for the advantage of the proprietors. The witness himself sowed about half a dozen corns of wheat, for a trial, in October, which lay in the ground all winter covered with snow and came to perfection in August. It was sown in a piece of good ground near the foot of a tree, which was in some measure a fence to it. The witness thought that beans, peas, barley and oats would grow there. He never tried it anywhere but at Moose river, but apprehended that corn would grow in the inland countries at a hundred miles distance, even as far north as Port Nelson, for he had found the climate warmer the further one goes inland.