HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, May 30, 1864.

COMMANDING OFFICER AT ALCATRAZ ISLAND:

SIR: I am instructed by the general commanding to say that so soon as the battery in curse of construction on the south end of Angel Island is completed you will send a detachment under the command of a sergeant to occupy the same. This work and the force occupying it will be under the immediate orders of the commanding officer of Alcatraz Island.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. C. DRUM,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF OREGON,
Fort Vancouver, Wash. Ter., May 30, 1864.

Lieutenant Colonel R. C. DRUM,

Asst. Adjt. General, Hdqrs. Dept. of the Pacific, San Francisco, Cal.:

COLONEL: The general commanding the department will have perceived by Special Orders, Numbers 75, of the 25th instnat, that I have ordered Company H, of the First Washington Territory Infantry, from Fort Walla Walla to this post, and Company B, of the same regiment, from Fort Colville to Fort Walla Walla. I have taken the smallest company from each post, but it is proper that I should report, for the information of General Wright, commanding the department, the circumstances which have impelled me to take this step. you noticed that my letter of the 19th of February (giving the programme in case of consolidation of the First Washington Territory Infantry) left but one large company at Fort Colville. I have been averse to reducing that post for reasons which General Wright will appreciate, as I believe that holding that permanently is essential to reap the proper fruits of his campaign of 1858 against those Indians. However, they have been very quiet of late, and if trouble shall occur a company may be returned to Fort Colville from Fort Walla Walla.

On the 25th instant I was informed by a letter from the Governor of Oregon that an outbreak of the secessionists was threatened to occur on election day-Monday, the 7th of June next. The pretense or signal, it is said, is to be voters being challenged and required to take the oath of allegiance. By a law passed two years-ago by the Legislature of Oregon, any voter can challenge the vote of another, and he can be required to take the oath of allegiance. The oath is entirely unobjectionable, being about the same as is prescribed in the act of Congress of 6th of August, 1861. If, as is averred, many have threatened in Oregon to shoot the man at the polls who challenges them, the threat is a very treasonable one, and its execution will certainly be an overt act. The ringleaders, if such act is committed, ought to be arrested at once. The plot as revealed to the Governor contemplates a seizure of Forts Hoskins and Yamhill. There is but half a company at either post, and anything done there would be of little account except as a signal of an outbreak. The canvass has not been conducted with personal abuse and bitterness, but intensely on the principles at stake, the Union party indorsing heartily and in full the entire policy of the Administration. I have no doubt it will succeed