and the protection of the cross-fire from the left of my trench, which swept the ground in their front.

My thanks are due to the members of my personal staff who were present with me. My acting assistant adjutant-general, First Lieutenant J. T. Hearne, and my volunteer aide-de-camp, Mr. R. B. Carlee, were invaluable to me in carrying orders, &c., through the hottest fire. My ordnance officer also, Lieutenant George B. Jewell, was of great service to me until unfortunately captured on the 10th, when we withdrew from the lower line of rifle-pits, while bringing up the rear of his ammunition train over some boggy ground.

Painful as the reflection is, I am forced to believe that the enemy's gunboats fired upon our division hospital, though our hospital flag was displayed from it. My reasons for thinking so are that I saw the mark of shot upon the building evidently too large to have been fired from my field battery, and the positions of the hospital building was such that it does not seem possible to me that it could have been in range of the gunboats if firing at the fort. Assistant Surgeon Wynkoop, Fifteenth Texas Dismounted Cavalry, was mortally wounded by a piece of shell while attending to the wounded in this hospital, and has since died. The field batteries also repeatedly struck this hospital, as it was in their range, and R. Wynkoop may have been killed by a shot from one of these.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES DESHLER,

Colonel, Commanding Second Brigade, Churchill's Division.

Captain B. S. JOHNSON,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

JANUARY 7, 1883.-Scout from Big Spring Creek toward Rocky Ford, Miss.

Report of Lieutenant Colonel Edward Prince, Seventh Illinois Cavalry.

CAMP ON BIG SPRING CREEK, MISS., January 8, 1863.

SIR: I have to report that, in compliance with orders of the colonel commanding, Major Koehler, in command of three companies, started at daylight yesterday for Rocky Ford. On account of high stage of water in the Tippah he was obliged to leave his horses on this side of that stream and cross his men on a drift; they proceeded within 6 miles of Rocky Ford. From the best information he could get there is no ferryboat there. Six rebel soldiers crossed in a canoe, and are now somewhere between the two streams with their families. The major returned about 9 p.m. yesterday, having traveled 30 miles, mostly on foot.

If we remain here I would like to make an expedition of two days, going as far as New Albany, for the purpose of scouting the country and getting into a large number of horse and mule corrals along the Tallahatchie. It would be a great accommodation if I had four companies of infantry to put at the mouth of Tippah to make a bridge and guard it till my return. The Tippah is falling a little. Making this expedition, these infantry companies would serve also as a guard for our camp. Captain Smith, of the Fourteenth Infantry [Illinois], would