CUMBERLAND, January 30, 1864-9 p. m.

Colonel MULLIGAN,

New Creek:

Your telegram to Colonel Campbell has just been shown me. Why do you think it advisable to send a regiment to the Junction? I suggest that the regiment had better not move until you are further advised, which you will undoubtedly be by the time you reach Burlington.

B. F. KELLEY,

Brigadier-General.

CUMBERLAND, January 30, 1864-10 p. m.

Colonel OLEY,

Commanding, &c., Martinsburg:

Fighting reported at Petersburg to-day. Hold your command in readiness to move at a moment's notice. Any orders you may receive from Sullivan you will obey until further orders. He may require your force, or a portion of it, to proceed with his.

B. F. KELLEY,

Brigadier-General.

BEVERLY, January 30, 1864.

General KELLEY:

DEAR SIR: I have taken the liberty to address you personally, to give you a semi-official letter. I have addressed an official letter to you of the same date of this, and forwarded through the regular channel. I thought that you would desire to know of the news from the front in this part of your command. Deserters and refugees are coming in daily. I sent to Wheeling 21 day before yesterday. Five have just come in within the last twenty-four hours, 2 of them on horseback. They left McDowell on the night of the 26th; both are quite intelligent; they say the report with them before leaving was that the Federal army was advancing up the valley, and that a rebel force of 17,000 was between Strasburg and New Market, under Early. Bill Jackson, they state, is under arrest for cowardice at or near Covington, during the last raid of General Averell. They also state that General Averell is a terror to them; more so than ever Stonewall Jackson was to us. A rumor of his approach is equal to death to them. His departure from West Virginia would be joyful news to them. I am also informed that great preparations are being made for a spring campaign into this State in the spring. One of the remarked that he heard some officers talking in Jackson's camp, near Warm Springs, that if we succeeded in capturing their party out now that we would make a good haul. I learn this evening that this must have referred to captain Springs, of Braxton. He is there, I learn, stealing horses. Colonel Arnett, of the Twentieth Virginia Cavalry, formerly from Marion County, wrote an article, which was published in the Richmond papers, that "they must and would retake and hold all of the country to the banks of the blue Ohio" the next season. This article was read at dress-parade. All deserters, without one exception, describe the condition of things in Dixie, in front of