while the navy are getting ready. I fire into Charleston at irregular intervals day night. From the Charleston papers, I judge that nine-tenths of all the missiles thrown enter the city. Most of the business offices are being removed beyond range.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Q. A. GILLMORE,

Major-General, Commanding.

Major General H. W. HALLECK,

General-in-Chief, Washington, D. C.

P. S. -The inclosed dispatch and newspaper slip were inadvertently omitted from my letter of the 20th. I judge that there are at least 200 men in Sumter.

[Inclosure Numbers 1.]

MORRIS ISLAND, S. C.,

November 20, 1863.

General GILLMORE:

The reconnaissance was as ordered. The boats met a heavy fire. Major Cunningham, who commanded, and Colonel Davis, who was at Gregg, estimate the fire at 200 muskets. We had 2 men wounded.

I shall send a full report as soon as I can get it.

A. H. TERRY,

Brigadier-General.

[Inclosure Numbers 2.]

NEWSPAPER SLIP.

Captain Champneys, engineer's department,w ho has just been relieved from duty at Fort Sumter, is a fellow-townsman, who, after a severe tour of duty at Fort Wagner, applied for duty at Sumter, and was among those fired into on the steamer Sumter, while en route from Morris Island to the fort, since which time he has been constantly at work upon the old ruins. Under his supervision, during the fifty days' interval between the first and second bombardments, the traverses and bomb-proofs have been put up, to which the garrison owes its protection during the assault on the 8th September. Captain Champneys was on the parapet, and was among the first to see the advancing boats, and at the request of Major Elliott, took charge of an important means of defense, in an exposed position of the forge wall. The two months constant labor at the fort has come what affected the health of this officer, and he has been temporarily relieved, to recuperate, under medical advice.