2,000 of the sick are paroled prisoners. The medical officers claim to have asked for all they need, but they hear nothing of its coming. The deaths average about seventeen per day. The great wants are medical supplies and transportation. I can and do seize stimulants sufficient, but the great want of my whole command is transportation. The quartermasters tell us we have but fourteen wagons of all sorts. The hospitals could well use about all of these, but I have also many refugees to care for and the ordinary work of the post to do besides. The surgeons are exceedingly anxious to hear of hospital ships coming, as about 1,000 of their patients could then be sent North immediately. To our great joy the sanitary steamer Governor Chase arrived, in charge of Doctors Dalton and Agnew, with underclothing enough to supply all the needy sick men, and a large stock of anti-scorbuties, articles of hospital diet, &c. A great amount of suffering is relieved thereby. I send also the morning report for the 19th of Lieutenant-Colonel Randlett, provost-marshal at this post, which sufficiently explains itself. Nearly 1,200 have taken the oath of allegiance since I took command. The people generally make but little trouble, in the city at least. Stray marauders annoy the inhabitants in all the region about us, but more particularly in Bladen and Brunswick Counties. In those districts are many rebel deserters, in some instances organized as companies. They subsist on the inhabitants, chiefly directing their attentions to citizens of strong rebel proclivities, and especially against enrolling officer, &c. Many of these are near their own homes. I believe the regular army could recruit from such men and from rebel deserters without our lines who have taken the oath, many men for cavalry service in the Northwest against the Indians. In requiring the oarh, protecting the people, and suppressing rebellious manifestations, I govern myself as strictly as possible by the President's Amnesty Proclamation, General Orders, Nos. 64 and 190, series of 1864, Lieutenant-General Grant's order concerning deserters, and the department commander's Order, Numbers 8, to the best of my ability, with the most earnest desire to make the people love and honor, but at all hazards, obey the Government. Of course there will be mistakes in individual instances, but I feel entirely assured that the major-general commanding will hear me also if complaints are made. Four hundred or 500 refugees have reached us from Fayetteville, but the great column does not appear. I have landed stores on Point Peter to be ready for them, sent a capable officer familiar with the country with a good party of men up from Point Peter toward Moore's Creek to meet, guide, and help them, and also have sent a small steamer up the Cape Fear this morning with a detachment and a guard and a supply of food to look along the bank for signs of them. The gun-boat Eolus came down last night from Fayetteville, the last of Major-General Sherman's army having left there. She reports nothing new. I cannot find the officer, but I am told that he believes that some of our forces are putting a pontoon across just below Elizabethtown. If so, it must be to cross the refugees. Certainly I must hear from them within twenty-four hours. Enough contrabands and por whites are here to give us much work. Besides sending some contrabands to Morehead City, at the request of General Backwith I have organized a battalion, now numbering 530, to work about the streets, wharves, hospitals, and defenses. I give them full rations and their families the refugee ration. When any of them can show that they have secured employment elsewhere they can go. We shall soon have the city thoroughly clean. Brevet Brigadier-General Hayes I charged with collecting, inventorying,