strong pickets, and use every precaution to prevent surprise, collecting all possible information of the enemy, and send the same to these headquarters. In order to keep up communication with this island, Major Carpenter, assistant quartermaster, will furnish a small boat and oars, to be kept under your charge. You will treat the people kindly, excepting those against whom you may have positive information or suspicions of communicating with or aiding the enemy. All such you will take prisoners.

Collect all the means of transportation, horses, mules, cattle, and such property as may be useful or necessary for the public service, and have the same turned over to the proper officers. You will, under no circumstances, permit thieving, pillaging, or any depredations on the part of your troops, but will be careful to maintain proper discipline among them. There is a quantity of commissary stores on board the boat, for which you will cause your quartermaster to receipt to Captain E. M. Emerson, commissary of subsistence of the division.

If all your command cannot be placed on the boat at once, you will use all possible dispatch in returning the boat and carrying over the rest, and, as soon as all are over, return the boat to Major Carpenter, assistant quartermaster.

You will be very economical of the water you may find on the island, as it will be very scarce.

By order of Major General N. J. T. Dana:

WM. HYDE CLARK,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

BRAZOS SANTIAGO, November 5, 1863.

Brigadier General WILLIAM VANDEVER,

Commanding First Brigade:

GENERAL: The Twentieth Iowa Infantry, Major Thompson commanding, has been ordered to proceed at an early hour in the morning to Point Isabel.

The major-general commanding directs that you move with your brigade at daylight in the morning to the point on the Rio Grande where the road from Boca Chica to Brownsville approaches nearest to or strikes the Rio Grande. It will be unnecessary to leave any troops at Boca Chica, and the regiment now there (Thirty-fourth Iowa), supposed to be) will be moved forward also.

You will collect all means of transportation, horses, mules, cattle, or whatever may be necessary or useful for the public service, but will treat the people you may meet kindly, allowing no pillaging or depredations to be committed by the men, and maintaining strict discipline amongst them, and enforcing obedience to orders.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

WM. HYDE CLARK,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

MISSISSIPPI SQUADRON, FLAG-SHIP BLACK HAWK,

Cairo, November 5, 1863.

Major General N. P. BANKS,

Commanding Department of the Gulf, New Orleans, La.:

GENERAL: I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of yours of October 17. I am glad to see your forces getting along so well in Louisiana.

I am now fitting out twelve gunboats, a little better than tin-clads,