Fort Benton wagon road and its influence upon military operations in this portion of the country. We have this summer, in addition to the distrubed stae of the country at home, which has withdraw portion of the troops from Oregon, a mining excitement which is pouring all the restless and loose portion of the community into the Nez Perce country, and upon the very land which was promised them as their own exclusive soil, to be exempt from all encroachments of the whites. The Indians are naturally idssatisfied, and to keep peace troops will be needed in their very mids. This takes one company of dragoons from this post, who are now on the reservation, and there should be another out. There is a prospect also of a large emigration this summer via Fort Hall, and unless troops be on the road from this post to keep it clear of the Snakes there will be a repetition of last year's massacre at Salmon Falls, and occurence too horrible almost to contemplate. It is also advisable to keep our posts sufficiently garrisoned for the protection of the public property. To meet all these requirements, with the drain upon us by Lieutenant Mullan's expedition for men and supplies, is too much. His escort of 100 men requires transportation and employes to be paid for out the quartmaster's appropriation for this post to the amount of more than $100,000 a year, thereby embarrassing the regular and legitimate operations of the post-and to what purpose? His roads has already cost $300,000, and now he can't travel the portion between this and the Biter Root Mountains, a distance of 200 or 300 miles, but he is making a new road farther to the north, and when that is completed it will only by practicable a very few months in each year on account of the water, which renders the country a perfect lake. The road will never be s suitable emigrant or military road compared with the other, for the reasons which I have already given in my report to the Quatermaster-General, dated January 8, 1861. The distance from the usual starting point in the States, as can easily be seen by referring to the map, is 400 miles greater by this route, if he ever completes it, command with the old road, and not half so good a road, and the danger will be more than double in the Sioux and Blackfoot country. These are plain facts. Now, if the object be expend so large as amount of money for the benefit of this portion of the country, it can still be done, and some real genefit also derived by those who are nominlly the objects of the enterprise by expending in on the old road in the manner recommended by me in my report referred to above. Mullan's escort and the $50,000 appropriated for this summer' emigrtion, if applied toward building a ferry or bridge at Fort Hall, to be protected by the Utah troops, and a ferry a Boise under protection of this post, would be all that is necessary to make a splendid road from the Rocky Mountains to this country. Emigrants and troops could then reach this valley in three or four months the States, and their animals not much the worse for the journey. They could cross Snake River at Fort Hall and travel on the north side of Boise through plenty of grass, water, and all that is necessary for a good road. Mr. Craigie, and intelligent and trusty man, for many years in charge of the Hudson Bay Fort at Boise, would be a very suitable person to take charge of the ferry at Boise. He has a Snake wife and speaks the language perfectly, and if he were allowed a certain amount of beef cattle and provisions to give away occasionally to such Indians as come about him, it must have a very beneficial effect on reconciling them to the whites. Lieutenant Mullan's road can never be of any real benefit to any one, on account of the enormous expense in traveling up the Misssouri by steam-boat, or the enormous distance and time reqiured compared with the other, if they come by land all the way. The road by