Territory calling for two additional companies of cavalry and one regiment of infantry to be mustered into the U. S. service for the period of three years of during the war. Will the general commanding the department inform me if these troops will rendezvous at this post? Should they do so it will be necessary for Captain C. A. Sumner, assistant quartermaster and acting commissary of subsistence, to make a requisition for the necessary supplies and prepare additional quarters for their accomodation.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHAS. McDERMIT,

Major, Second Cavalry California Volunteers, Commanding Post.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, Cal., December 8, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel J. F. CURTIS,

Fourth Infty. Cal. Vols., Commanding Dist. of Southern Cal., Drum Barracks, via Los Angeles, Cal.:

SIR: The department commanders desires you to send one company of infantry under a competent and discreet officer to take possession of Santa Catalina Island. All persons, except such as you may recommend to be excepted and Government employes, will be removed from the ilsnad, and no one allowed to make a settelement on it without the express authority of the department commander.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. C. DRUM,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF OREGON,
Fort Vancouver, Wash. Ter., December 8, 1863.

Brigadier General GEORGE D. RAMSAY,

Chief of Ordnance Department, Washington City, D. C.:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your letter of the 7th of October, stating that the following guns have been shipped to Captain G. H. Elliot, of Engineers, at Cape Disappointment, Oreg.: Two 15-inch guns, ten 10-inch Rodman guns, five 8-inch Rodman guns. (I suppose these are columbiads, not Rodman guns.) In the leter of General Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, dated December 22, 1862, he said that upon the recommendation of the Engineer Department the following guns would be sent: Two 15-inch guns, twenty-three 10-inch guns, five 8-inch columbiads, fifteen 200-pounders. I hope they will be sent at once. Allow me to express also the hope that with the 15-inch guns the necessary apparatus for raising, mounting, and fixing them was sent, as we have no experience on this coast in their management. For the further defense of this river there should be placed on deposit at Vancouver Arsenal a number of guns (say fifty) which could be used on emergency. There should also be here a deposit of the iron requisite for platforms for the same. Captain Elliot says that he exhausted the market of San Francisco to get the iron requisite to make the platforms he is now building at the mouth of the Colubmia. But I shall make these things the subject of a future communication,