SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., September 4, 1861.

Governor JOHN G. DOWNEY,

Sacramento City:

Cavalry company organized and reported at Yreka September 4. Signed Charles McDermit. This company had better be ordered to report to Colonel Colton, in this city, immediately.

E. V. SUMNER,

Brigadier-General, U. S. Army, Commanding.

SAN FRANCISCO, September 5, 1861.

[Brigadier General E. V. SUMNER:]

GENERAL: In reply to your interrogatories of yesterday concerning the roads by which a force could be marched through Mexico to Texas, I have to reply that the only practicable one within my knowledge is that from San Blas by Tepic, Guadalajara, and Queretaro. The road from Mazatlan northward by Durango is impassable for wheeled vehicles. That from Guaymas might be traveled, though the scarcity of water would present an almost insurmountable difficulty to an army. By Guaymas, admitting its practicability, you would reach El Paso, but from that point to the settlements of Texas-say San Antonio-you would meet with very great difficulties with a large command, and an insignificant force would easily cut off your supplies, which could only be kept up by trains traveling over an inhospitable desert infested with hostile Indians and at incalculable expenditure of money. In fact, I see no way, if Texas is to be attacked from this side, except that of passing through the most thickly settled portion of Mexico, if she will permit it, where supplies could be obtained with ease and at reasonable rates, and entering Texas from the Mexican territory near some safe harbor in the Gulf, where a fleet of steamers would co-operate with you from the Northern States. My knowledge of the country enables me to assert with confidence that a large force-say 5,000 men-cannot march from here by the Gila on Texas and keep up its supplies, nor by Guaymas and El Paso, nor by Mazaltan and Durango. Either of these roads would bring you to New Mexico, and between that and the Gulf it would be impossible, except at an enormous expense, to keep your supplies up or your communications open.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

E. F. BEALE.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC, No. 165.
San Francisco, September 5, 1861.

1. On the authority of the General-in-Chief, Company L, Third Artillery (Captain Judd's) will be mounted and equipped as a field battery of artillery. Captain Judd will immediately make out and send to these headquarters the necessary requisitions on the quartermaster's and ordnance departments.

2. The detachment of Company L, Third Artillery, under command of Lieutenant M. D. Hardin, at Fort Umpqua, will be relived without delay by a detachment to consist of ten privates and two non-commissioned officers, under the command of a subaltern to be selected by Colonel Seawell from the companies of the Sixth Regiment of Infantry at Benicia Barracks. When relieved Lieutenant Hardin will proceed with this