steam-boats above Shreveport are loaded with cotton and sugar, and are in charge of officers, steam-boat men, and speculators, who propose running them out on private account. Two thousand bales of cotton are lying at a point thirty miles below Shreveport which citizens are attempting to claim. George McGee, a citizen residing ten miles below Shreveport, is will known to our prisoners as a through Union man; will give any information necessary in regard to this thieving operation. He is at present watching the disposition made of Government property and its places of concealment. They report that large amounts of rope and bagging are being sold to citizens at $1 per coil. Missouri troops are guarding what property there is left at Shreveport, and will not allow Confederate officers to touch it.

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

FRANK N. WICKER,

Lieutenant, Signal Corps, U. S. Army.

(In absence of Captain S. M. Eaton, chef signal officer, Military Division of West Mississippi.)

[MAY 30, 1865. -For General Orders, Nol 101, War Department, Adjutant-General's Office, relating to retention of arms by soldiers on being honorably discharged from service, see Vol. XLVI, Part III, p. 1237.]

NEW ORLEANS, May 30, 1865.

Major General E. R. S. CANBY,

Commanding, &c., New Orleans:

GENERAL: We have had the honor to advise you of our appointment as commissioners to negotiate for the cessation of military resistance to the United States in the State of Texas, of our further duty and desire to promote the prompt and satisfactory restoration of the relations of Texas with the United Sates Government, and to solicit a conference with you, which you granted us last evening, with the understanding, however, "that the power of military commanders is limited to the determination of questions that are purely military. " Adverting to the conference of last evening, we avail ourselves of your permission to state some of its points more formally. Having found on our arrival that a convention agreed upon between yourself and General E. Kirby Smith for the surrender of the Confederate troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department had been already transmitted to Texas, our action on that subject was concluded. To prevent any misapprehension, however, as to the actual condition of affairs in Texas (known to us, but not to General Smith's commissioners), we deemed it our duty to inform you that at the time we left Texas a large portion of the Confederate troops had actually disbanded themselves and gone to their homes, and before intelligence of the convention of surrender shall be received the r the remainder may also have dispersed. we also informed you of the circumstances under which the movable public property lately belonging to the Confederate Government was seized and lost. This state of things could not be controlled by the Confederate officers. It was our endeavor to assure you that the people of Texas are ready, in sincere good faith, to return to their relations to the Government of the United States. The course to be pursued with respect to the State government is of the deepest concern to the people. The time for the regular election of the governor and legislature, in