304 TlMEHRI. 
enquire into this claim ; and it is from the report of these 
commissioners, dated on the 24th of January 1855, that 
most of the following facts are taken. According to the 
title-deeds laid before the commissioners by the claimants 
to Groote Creek, the place was first granted by Her- 
mann GELSKIRKE, then commander of the colony of 
Essequibo, on the 12th of January 1793, to CORNELIUS 
BOTER, one of the members of the Council of Policy ; 
but this grant was not recorded in the Government 
Secretary's Office until the 21st of January, 1814. The 
grant recorded in 1814 was possibly an original document ; 
but by 1855 tms deed na cl been lost, and all that was sub- 
mitted to the commissioners who reported in that year 
was a certified copy, obtained from the record book in 
1823. Accordingto this copy the original grant was signed, 
as above stated, by Governor GELSKIRKE in 1793. But 
GELSKIRKE had died in, or before 1742; at least, in 
September of that year his heirs made application to the 
Council of Policy relative to the boundary of their land ; 
and in the previous July STORM VAN GRAVESANDE was 
provisionally appointed Governor. Thus even according 
to the claimants, the grant under which they claimed had 
been signed in 1 793 by a Governor who had died in 1742 ! 
"But, now, (say the commissioners of 1855,) should the 
" supposition, which does not appear unreasonable, be 
"adopted that the clerk in recording in 1814 the original 
" grant made a clerical error in the date, we have then 
" to consider whether the conditions of the grant have 
" been fulfilled. By that document, the grantee was 
" bound to cultivate the land and to have sugar-works 
"erected, The place is now, and has for the last sixty 
