Smith. I can get subsistence stores from here, and shall trust mainly to living on the country. General Ewing was at Carthage yesterday, and captured a major and 30 men of the enemy. I expect to hear from him during the night.

JOHN McNEIL,

Brigadier-General.

Major-General SCHOFIELD.

MADISON COUNTRY, ARK.,

Fifteenth miles south of Hartville, October 23, 1863.

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of telegram assigning me to command at Fort Smith, and directing that I proceed to that place so soon as I have attended to the enemy in my front. I am in close pursuit, but have been terribly impeded to-day and yesterday in this mountainous country by my transportation, breaking wagons, caissons, and gun-carriages. I could only make 15 miles to-day. I have received a message from General Ewing, and expect him to join me to-morrow. If he does, I can cut loose from all wheeled impediments, and lay aboard of the enemy when I overtake him. We have some 20 prisoners, and have released some who were conscripts. We are to-night within 14 miles of the camp of the combined forces of Shelby, Brooks, and Hunter. I hope to catch them this side of the Arkansas River, and have no doubt of the result. When I arrived at Fort Smith, I will furnish you a detailed account of the expedition.

An order of the War Department prohibits the removal of assistant adjutant-general without consent of department commanders. Will you please to order Captain [C. G.] Laurant to report to me at Fort Smith? I regard him as almost indispensable to me, and shall be much obliged to you to telegraph the order to Springfield, where I send him to-morrow to turn over matters to my successor. I would also be glad to have Captain J. W. Rabb ordered into my new district; he will be of great advantage to me.

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,

JOHN McNEIL,

Brigadier-General of Volunteers.

Major-General SCHOFIELD.

HEADQUARTERS FRONTIER DISTRICT,
Fort Smith, November 1, 1863.

GENERAL: I have the honor to report the following facts as the result of the expedition, to the command of which I was verbally ordered at Saint Louis on the 9th of October:

I arrived at Lebanon on the 12th, and finding that Lieutenant Colonel Quin Morton had marched to Linn Creek with a detachment of the Twenty-Third Missouri Infantry Volunteers, and another of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry, and that he expected to be joined by a detachment of the Sixth and Eighth Missouri State Militia Cavalry, I ordered Major Eno, in command, to fall back on Lebanon, and proceeded to Buffalo, where I found Colonel John Edwards, Eighteenth Iowa Volunteers, in command, with a few cavalry and some Enrolled Militia. I at once addressed myself to the work of concentrating force enough for pursuit when the enemy should cross the Osage on his retreat south. With about 260 men and a section of Rabb's battery, I marched to Bolivar, where General Holland was in camp with parts of two regiments Enrolled Militia,