agents and consulted with a view to peace. While these attempts at overtures were being made the Indians suddenly appeared all along the line, attacking trains, posts, and escorts. They were, however, in every case repulsed. The columns were pushed out after them, one of which overtook some of them and captured their camps, ponies, and some of their people, and chastised them very severely, so much, indeed, that they left the route entirely and have now gone to the Washita Mountains. Two of these tribes, the Comanches and Kiowas, or a portion of them, desire peace, and it is possible one may be made. However, the columns moving from the Arkansas River are well advanced in their preparations, and will soon be in the heart of their country, when peace will be made or the Indians fearfully chastised, as the case may require.

General Ford has shown great activity in his operations, and with the means at hand has accomplished as much as could be expected. He has been delayed in the movement of his last expedition by reason of non-arrival of subsistence stores, the fault for which he lays upon his staff officers, whose duty it was to procure them. When we consider that 15,000 troops had to be equipped, and in most cases marched nearly 1,000 miles, all the provisions transported by wagons, and most of our transportation furnished from distant places, together with the fact that most of the officers connected with these operations had been on duty and employed where water or rail communications were at hand, it is, I think, no matter of surprise that some unnecessary delay has occurred. As a general rule I find that nearly all the officers have endeavored to do their whole duty in these matters. They have, however, had to labor under many difficulties. The want of bridges across the Platte and Loup Fork retarded the movement of troops very greatly. The Indians operated on both sides, and we had often to cross at time when it was almost impassable on account of high water. I applied for and obtained pontoon bridges, which are being placed over the Loup Fork at Columbus and the Platte at Fort Kearny. The cost of good substantial bridges over both these streams would be saved to Government every year by the reduction in expanse of obtaining wood and hay on the north side alone, while they would also save 100 miles of land travel for all of our freight, for which we now pay $2. 26 per 100 pounds per 100 miles. The freight could be landed at Omaha for from 25 to 50 cents per 100, thus saving from $1. 75 to $2 upon every 100 pounds going over the northern route, and also take our trains over a level and settled route instead of a broken and unsettled one. Most of the small streams on this route are now crossed by military bridges to Fort Kearny. Twenty millions of pounds of freight at least will pass over that route this year, and I strongly recommend to the Government the bridging at least of the Platte. In another spring fifty miles of the Union Pacific Railroad west of Omaha will have been completed, leaving only 130ravel to Fort Kearny, whereas we now have about 300 from Fort Leavenworth and 180 from Omaha. The wooden pontoons ordered to me will not last longer than another year, and outside of purely military reasons that recommend this permanent bridging, the amount of trade and travel flowing west of Colorado, Utah, Dakota, Idaho, and Montana, and the inability of the people living near the crossing of the Platte and Loup Fork to put in these bridges, and the impossibility during a large portion of the year to keep ferries on these streams, would justify the expenditure of a sum sufficient to do this bridging in the incalculable benefits that would accrue to the Government in the development of these Territories.