You will report the concentration of these troops under your command and prepare to take the field immediately.

You will also employ some good Indian scouts, acquainted with the country south of you, in the direction of General Curtis' command, and obtain all the information from them you can, which will be transmitted to these headquarters by express.

I have telegraphed these proceedings to General Hunter, who is in communication by telegraphs with department headquarters.

I have also telegraphed the substance of your communication and the re-enforcements sent you to headquarters Department of the Missouri. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your most obedient servant,

CHAS. G. HALPINE,

Major and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, Saint Louis, February 28, 1862.

Brigadier General SAMUEL R. CURTIS,
Fayetteville, Ark.:

Carry out the general instructions of the 22nd. Vary the details as circumstances may require. General Hunter will soon move with 5,000 men on your right flank. All you have to do now is to hold your position and keep and cut off their supplies. I have kept Colonel Wyman at Rolla. It will not do yet to weaken that post.

H. W. HALLECK,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS FOURTH DIVISION, Camp Halleck, Cross Hollow, February 28, 1862.

Captain T. I. McKENNY,
Acting Assistant Adjutant-General:

CAPTAIN: Colonel Dodge came in this morning with all the men and teams he had at the Eagle Mills; he regretted very much to leave them, and says the inhabitants begged him to stay. Blackburn, the owner, is very fearful that the mills will be burned.

The Texas camped not far from the mills, both going and returning.

They report about the same that our own people do, viz, that they burned 4 wagons and got about 40 horses. They sent word to Colonel Dodge that if he did not leave the mills by 12 m. yesterday they would come and hang every d-d Yankee there. Dodge, however, was not quite ready to leave and the Texans thought better of it.

Dodge says that there are but two passages through the country from Huntsville towards Crossville, one by Blackburn's and the other by Van Winkle's, 3 miles off. He says the whole country can be controlled by a picket at the mills, supported by a regiment at While River Crossing.

I have just returned from a reconnaissance as far as the crossing

of White River, 7 miles from here, from which place I sent my aide direct to Sugar Creek (Trott's), said to be 5 to 10 miles from there. He has not returned.

Colonel Vanderver has returned from reconnoitering the road from Camp Benjamin towards Sugar Creek. It comes into the Telegraph