settled decision of the War Department, that forty-five guns would be sent for the defence at the mouth of the Columbia River. On the 4th of May, 1864, General Ramsay writes that only seventeen guns can then be sent. I desire by this letter most earnestly to protest against this last decission, and to urge that the first amount promised shall be sent at the earliest possible date. We havenot here the arsenals of the Union at our back. Here more than at any point of our seacoast, the most remote and exposed point, the rule should be followed, "In time of peace to prepare for war" It takes six or eight months for the guns to reach here around Cape Horn, and after any declaraiton of war we would be subjected to the most cruel delays and the ordnance explosed to capture. Besines the supply for the post at the mouth, my letter of the 12th of January, 1864, recommended a deposit at Vancouver Arsenal of fifty guns and platforms, and Brigadier-General Totten, Chief of Engineers, under date of the 14the of March, 1864, concurred in my recommendation, and a letter of the 21st of March, 1864, from your office promised they should be sent as soon as practicable. You will readily judge of my disappointment when even the supply now wanted for the forts is refused. The forts are all ready to mouth the forty-five orginally promised. In this connection I desire again to call attention, as I did in my letters and requisition of the autumn of 1862, to the importance, for the sake of economy, that the ordnance should be sent in ships which can sail from porsts on the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Columbia River. Vessels drawing fourteen feet of water can get in. The guns already sent have first been shipped to San Francisco. It has cost nearly if not quite as much to get them from Alcatraz Island, in the harbor of San Francisco, to this river, as it did to get them from New York to San Francisco.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJ. ALVORD,

Brigadier-Geneal, U. S. Volunteers, Commanding District.

(Duplicate sent through the Ingineer Department.)

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF OREGON,
Fort Vancouver, Wash. Ter., February 23, 1865.

Lieutenant Colonel R. C. DRUM,

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

COLONEL: Governor Gibbs reports that the company raised near Jacksonville, Southern Oregon, for the First Oregon Infantry, isready to be mustered in; F. B. Spragye, captain. It will be Company I, or the ningh company of the regiment. I recommend that it remain at Camp Baker, near Jacksonville, and be sent, when the communications permit, to, Fort Klamth. That will make one company of cavalry and one of infantry at that post. If you send to me the order for the company to remain at Camp Baker, please telegraph me and I will order the arms and clothing to be sent from this place. I will here respectfully submit that Fort Klamath should be attached to my district. Many matters connected with the offices of the Governor, of the surveyor-general, of the superintendent of Indian affairs, and of the provost-marshal-general render it proper. The people ask for it. Umpqua and Rouge River Valleys, in Oregon, were left out of the