Hickory Plains. Have you heard anything from Colonel Mitchell? What is the total loss of the Fifty-fourth Illinois? Where is the place where Doctor Sullivan says the rebels are crossing? Those reports are, many of them, started to deceive us.

E. A. CARR.

LITTLE ROCK, August 25, 1864--8 p. m.

Colonel ENGELMANN, Brownsville:

Your dispatches do not state what disposition you have made of your troops. Where is your cavalry and infantry? At what time did your cavalry march to follow Shelby? Have the detachments of the Tenth Illinois and Second Wisconsin Cavalry arrived? Let your telegrams embrace everything that is of importance. Which way has Shelby gone; has he moved toward Austin?

By order of Brigadier General E. A. Carr:

C. H. DYER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

BROWNSVILLE, August 25, 1864--8 p. m.

Captain C. H. DYER,

Asst. Adjt. General, District of Little Rock:

CAPTAIN: An old citizen calling himself Doctor Sullivan came into camp this evening. He states that he lives twelve miles south from here. This morning four rebel soldiers came to his house, and, mistaking him for a rebel captain named Rallston, addressed him as such and told him that rebel forces were crossing the Arkansas at Richmond and would be this way in four or five days. Doctor Sullivan thinks the men were bearers of dispatches; they asked the way to Shelby's army. Soon after the soldiers left the doctor started for this place to give the information. Six miles south of here he found the bridge across Bayou Metoe, on the Pine Bluff road, burned. A scout of ten men (all that can be mustered here) with be sent south to-night. The Third Wisconsin Cavalry, mentioned in dispatch of last night as having been ordered to this place, has not been heard from.

I have the honor to be, captain, your obedient servant,

ADOLPH ENGELMANN,

Colonel Forty-third Illinois Vols., Commanding Second Brigade.

BROWNSVILLE, August 25, 1864.

(Received 9.30 p. m.)

Captain C. H. DYER,

Assistant Adjutant-General:

The following communication from General Andrews just arrived from Devall's Bluff by cavalry courier:

I have sent for a gun-boat. I wish authority to send to Saint Charles for the troops there. The enemy have bridges across the Arkansas River. The plan as reported is to attack Little Rock, Devall's Bluff, and the railroad.

The general requests an answer.*

A. ENGELMANN,

Colonel, &c.

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*See Carr to Andrews, August 25, p. 850.

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