Among the multitude of requirements, made by General Lee, either on his own motion or at the prompting of those who pandered to his baser inclinations, and which were obsequiously obeyed by the Provincial Congress, was one, made early in March, 1.776, for " a Magazine of Provisions and Military ■' Stores, to be established in Westchester-county," the requisition being supplemented with a recommendation that " the Deputies of Westchester-county " purchase and deposit, in different stores in that " County, twelve hundred barrels of good salted Pork, "wherever it is to be bought; and that the said " salted Pork be repacked and pickled by a sworn • Packer of New York ; and that the Deputies of "Albany-county purchase eighteen hundred and fifty "bushels of good Peas, and send them to the Depu- " ties of Westchester-county, to be by them stored in " the same manner." 7

The proposed test of the quality of the Pork to be purchased was, however, not satisfactory to those who were manipulating the Congress, in the interest of the job; and, on the ninth of March, when that body resumed the consideration of the proposition, it was led to suppose that the Resolution which had been adopted, approving the same, was " imperfect, " inadequate to the end, and that the method thereby " proposed will create unnecessary expense." It also appointed a Committee of three Deputies, two . of whom were John Thomas, Junior, and Colonel Joseph Drake, both of them Deputies from Westchestercounty, " to reconsider the method of establishing a " Magazine of Provisions, and to report thereon." 8