by General Hamilton. A few minutes after daylight a flag of truce approached our batteries with information that the enemy had evacuated his works. Small parties were at once advanced by General Hamilton to ascertain whether such were the facts, and Captain Mower, First United States Infantry, with Companies A and H, of that regiment, was sent forward to plant the United States flag over the abandoned works. A brief examination of them disclosed how hasty and precipitate had been the flight of the enemy. Their dead were found unburied; their suppers, untouched, standing on the tables; candles burning in the tents, and every other evidence of a disgraceful panic. Private baggage of officers and knapsacks of men were left behind. Neither provisions nor ammunition were carried off. Some attempt was made to carry ammunition, as boxes without number were found on the bank of the river where the steamers had been landed.

It is almost impossible to give any exact account of the immense quantities of property and supplies left in our hands. All their artillery, field batteries and siege guns, amounting to thirty-three pieces, magazines full of fixed ammunition of the best character, several thousand stand of superior small-arms, with hundreds of boxes of musket cartridges, tents for an army of 10,000 men, horses, mules, wagons, intrenching tools, &c., are among the spoils. Nothing except the men escaped, and they only with what they wore. They landed on the opposite side of the river, and are scattered in the wide bottoms. I immediately advanced Hamilton's division into the place, and had the guns of the enemy turned upon the river, which they completely command. The flight of the enemy was so hasty that they abandoned their pickets and gave no intimation to the forces at Island Numbers 10. The consequence is that one gunboat and ten large steamers which were there are cut off from below, and must either be destroyed or fall into our hands. Island Numbers 10 must necessarily be evacuated, as it can neither be re-enforced nor supplied from below.

During the operations here the whole of the forces were at different times brought under the fire of the enemy and behaved themselves with great gallantry and coolness. It seems proper, however, that I should make special mention of those more directly concerned in the final operations against the place. The Tenth and Sixteenth Illinois, commanded respectively by Colonels Morgan and R. F. Smith, were detailed as guards to the proposed trenches and to aid in constructing them. They marched from camp at sunset on the 12th, and drove in the pickets and grand guards of the enemy, as they were ordered, at shouldered arms, and, without returning a shot, covered the front of the intrenching parties, and occupied the trenches and rifle pits during the whole day and night of the 13th under furious and incessant cannonading from sixty pieces of heavy artillery. At the urgent request of their colonels their regimental flags were kept flying over our trenches, through they offered a conspicuous mark to the enemy. The coolness, courage, and cheerfulness of these troops, exposed for two nights and a day to the furious fire of the enemy at short range and to the serve storm which raged during the whole night of the 13th, are beyond all praise, and delighted and astonished every officer who witnessed it.

The division of General Stanley, consisting of the Twenty-seventh, Thirty-ninth, Forty-third, and Sixty-third Ohio Regiments, supported the battery from 2 o'clock a. m. on the 13th to daylight on the 14th, exposed to the full fury of the cannonade, without being able to return a shot, and the severe storm of that night, and displayed coolness,