with 400 infantry and 150 cavalry up White River. I disembarked Seventy-five cavalry, Captain Flesher, at Peach Orchard Bluff, at 8 o'clock that evening. Also ninety-five infantry, Captain O. F. Dreher, at Negro Hill, and ninety-five infantry, Lieutenant Armstrong, at mouth of Red River, the same evening. I landed with the remainder at the point eight miles below Augusta at 1.30 o'clock the same night. I then proceeded in person with seventy-five cavalry, Captain Goss, and seventy-five infantry, Captain Taylor, to Gray's Ferry, on the Cache, ten miles east of Augusta where I got possession of the ferry and crossed the cavalry before daylight. I stationed the infantry (Captain Taylor) at the ferry, and with the cavalry scoured the country east of Cache. I got as far as Widow Thomas' place before the people or soldiers in the country had any notice of our approach, but from that place notice was spread, and immediately after all the Confederate soldiers scattered in that neighborhood, under Colonels McCray, Dobbin, Jackman, and Freeman, took to the woods and bottoms, where I could not reach them. Captain Fisher, whom I expected to have met at or near the Widow Thomas', was unable to cross the Cache at all; therefore the programme as agreed upon at my previous interview with the general, and which would otherwise have been good and successful, was materially interfered with.

The certain information gathered is that Colonels McCray and Dobbin are reorganizing their respective commands, and were to have rendezvoused on the 16th at a place six or eight miles east of Gray's Ferry; that the neighboring country is overrun by small bands of rebel soldiers and jayhawkers making their way to the proposed rendezvous; that the country abounds in corn and cattle, all of which is being gathered by those forces; that the citizens are heartily tired of these rebel marauders and anxious to have the country held by the U. S. forces. I also learn that the forces about to be organized there will probably number 500 men, mostly unarmed and short of ammunition, and that the purpose of McCray is to move south, by way of Cotton Plant, in a short time. Failing to form a junction with Captain Flesher, and finding that I could act by surprise no longer, I returned to Augusta in the afternoon of the 14th instant, where I joined Captain Flesher, who had captured a number of rebel soldiers in the country called The Point. Lieutenant-Colonel Foster, who had remained in the vicinity of Augusta with the remainder of the infantry, captured a lot of contraband goods on their way from Memphis to the west side of White River. I am convinced that an extensive contraband trade is carried on at Memphis with that part of the country at enormous profits (such as a bale of cotton for a barrel of salt) to the parties at Memphis engaged in it. The articles captured were 10 barrels salt, 1 barrel pork, one-half barrel molasses, which I learned had been smuggled through from Memphis by a party there named B. F. Leamice to one E. G. Donnelly, of White County, Ark.

On my return I left Augusta at 4 o'clock this morning, took on the troops at Red River and Negro Hill, who had captured some prisoners at or near West Point and at the salt-works. I learned that Captain Rayborne is in the country about White River, below Red River, and that the salt-works are being run per order of rebel General Shelby for the Confederate cause. This I did not learn till after I had returned below these works, or I should have destroyed them. We were fired into by a party of perhaps a dozen men (probably Rayborne's) six miles below Red River to-day, but no damage was done. No accident occurred during the trip. The officers and men all behaved with the