Benham might have caught him. He is probably at Newborn, on the Southwestern Virginia Railroad. Let us keep ready to harass. Have your troops the shelter-tents or India-rubber blankets?

W. S. ROSECRANS..

HEADQUARTERS HOOKER'S DIVISION,.

Camp Baker, Lower Potomac, Maryland, November 22, 1861.

Brigadier General S. WILLIAMS,.

Assistant Adjutant-General, Army of the Potomac:.

GENERAL: An animated five was kept up from the rebel batteries on two or three schooners descending the river this afternoon with no better success than heretofore. The rebels will certainly abandon their purpose of claiming the navigation of the Potomac by means of the batteries now in position ere long. They must see that it is labor in vain. Of late a large number of vessels have passed and repassed at night, and no effort has been made to check them. Thus far their labor has been equally fruitless during the day..

Professor Lowe has not returned from his mission to Washington. I see no effort making to inflate the balloon on shore, as was intended by him at the time of leaving..

The two companies of cavalry dispatched to the lower part of the Peninsula have not returned..

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,.

JOSEPH HOOKER,.

Brigadier-General, Commanding Division..

NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

Brigadier General J. J. REYNOLDS, Huttonsville, W. Va.:

The commanding general [Rosecrans] directs that you send to Covington, Ky., in accordance with the orders of Brigadier General L. Thomas, Adjutant-General, the following regiments: Third, Sixth, and Twenty-fourth Ohio, and Fifteenth and Seventeenth Indiana Regiments..

[No signature.]

NOVEMBER 24, 1861.

Colonel W. B. HAZEN, Gallipolis, Ohio:

Zeigler's detached companies return to Ceredo; the Thirty-fourth Ohio occupies Barboursville. Either of them can strike Front Hill and catch that cavalry. The only road known of here from Ceredo to Logan Court-House is by Louisa and Sandy. It is not less than 60 miles from Front Hill to Logan, through a mountainous country, traversed by streams, now swollen, and over roads that cannot be good. The expedition you propose with a regiment, in such weather and by such a route, seems to be likely to break down your troops and be unsuccessful. You will observe the distance from Front Hill is such that it would take you nearly three days, as the roads are, to Logan. You speak of returning by Barboursville. The Commanding General has ridden that road on horseback about this season of the year, and it took two full days to ride it. The road is utterly impassable for wheels, and nearly so for horses, the nearest mountain paths in many places twice or thrice.