any rendered any rapid movement an impossibility. The enemy was better mounted and had forty-eighth hours' start. The longer such pursuit was continued the more hopeless it became.

I am, captain, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. R. WEST,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

Captain C. H. DYER,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Dist. of Little Rock.

Numbers 2. Report of Colonel William H. Graves, Twelfth Michigan Infantry, commanding First Brigade, Second Division, Seventh Army Corps.

HDQRS. FIRST Brigadier, SECOND DIV., SEVENTH ARMY CORPS, Devall's Bluff, Ark., September 8, 1864.

LIEUTENANT: Pursuant to orders received from Brigadier General C. C. Andrews, commanding division, I embarked at daylight on the 30th day of August, 1864, with the Twelfth Michigan Infantry and detachments of the Fifty-fourth and Sixty-first Illinois Infantry, 22 officers and 515 men all told, on board the steamer Kate Hart, and convoyed by gun-boat Numbers 30, Captain Grace commanding, proceeded up White River to effect a junction with Brigadier-General West, commanding a cavalry expedition then in pursuit of the rebel General Shelby, supposed to be in the neighborhood of Jacksonport. Also had rations and ammunition for General West's command. The river proved to great difficulty in getting along at all. During the second day out (August 31) saw several detachments of rebel pickets along the river. Ran on to within nineteen miles by river six miles by land, of Augusta, when finding the navigation growing more difficult, I decided, after consultation with Captain Grace, of the gun-boat, that it would be imprudent to go higher up with the boats. We had passed rebel pickets for the last twenty miles of river, and from information they were of Dobbin's command, who was reported to be in Augusta with a force variously estimated by our informants at form 800 to 1,500 men. Nothing could be obtained in reference to the whereabouts of General West. Accordingly I directed our return to Devall, where the expedition arrived in the afternoon of the 2nd instant. The only casualty was one man of the Twelfth Michigan Infantry, shot dead accidentally. Shortly after debarking, instructions were received from General Andrews to re-embark at daylight next morning. Lighter draught boats and re-enforcements were furnished for this second expedition, which consisted of detachments of my own and Ward's brigade, Smith's division, Seventeenth Corps, in all, numbering 1,000 officers and men, on board three steamers. Left Devall's Bluff shortly after daylight Saturday, September 3, destination and object same as before. During the forenoon of the next day at and above Peach Orchard Bluffs saw rebel pickets, who kept along the bank ahead of us, watching our movements. About 4 p. m. the advanced boat, the Commercial, was fired into by a party of rebels concealed in the bushes on the left bank of the river. The first volley killed 1 man, wounded myself severely in the knee, and 7 men, 3 of them seriously. Directly after the first fire we were greeted by a volley from the opposite bank of the river from a small party of perhaps forty or fifty. The party firing the first volley numbered from 300 to 400 men, as was afterward ascertained from a