monthly reports to their chief at department headquarters of the amount and kind they have used.

* * * * *

By command of Major-General McDowell:

R. C. DRUM,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC, Numbers 174.
San Francisco, Cal., August 10, 1864.

* * * * *

3. The company of Native California Cavalry mustered into service at Santa Barbara will proceed to and take post at Drum Barracks. The quartermaster's department will furnish the necessary transportation.

4. Camp Babbitt, near Visalia, Cal., is hereby detached from the district of Southern California and transferred to the District of California (headquarters Sacramento, Cal.).

* * * * *

By command of Major-General McDowell:

R. C. DRUM,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

OFFICER PROVOST-MARSHAL,

MIDDLE DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA,

Sacramento, August 10, 1864.

Brigadier General JOHN S. MASON,

Acting Assistant Provost-Marshal-General, San Francisco, Cal.:

SIR: I have the honor to report the result of my investigations of the secret work of the association called "The Kinghts of the Columbian Star," through Hiram Potter, one of their number. This has been a very tedious and slow business, for the reason that the whole system is so cloaked and guarded that but few of the members really know anything about it. The organization, as near as I can now determine, is as follows: There is a governor-general for the State, and a lieutenant-governor-general for each locality, who has a deputy lieutenant-governor-general to assist him. There are no large meetings held of the order in their capacity as an association, but a few only of the officers and trusted members get together to initiate new members and devise the work which is to be carried out. Potter has only lately learned that there is a third degree, which he has not yet obtained, but it is proposed to give it to him soon. I may here remark that it is one of the cardinal principles of the other that no member of an inferior degree knows of a higher until he is prepared and expected to receive it. In the first degree, which is called thirty-three defenders, the candidate is first examined and [if] found to be a suitable person for their use, he is then sworn in a solemn and imposing manner. The substance of the obligation is that he will not support in any election or employ in business an abolitionist if any other person can be had; that he will obey his officers in all things; that he will resist the enforcement of any and all unconstitutional laws by the Administration, his officers being the judges of the unconstitutionality of the laws; that he will furnish himself with a rifle or double-barrel shotgun if possible, and positively to furnish a revolver pistol and bowie knife, and always to keep on hand a supply of ammunition for a three-days' hunt. After taking this obligation they are