recite. I have therefore respectfully to request you will direct the quartermaster at places from which prisoners are most frequently sent to require in their contracts for transportation that suitable cars be furbished, provided with lights for night travel; that the time in which the journey is to be made may be stipulated, and that a vessel of water of proper size be placed in each car where the number of prisoners is sufficiently large to require one or more cars. The following are places from which prisoners are most frequently forwarded by rail: Washington; Baltimore; Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio; Sandusky, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; Louisville, Ky. ; Camp Morton, Indianapolis, Ind. ; Camp Douglas, Chicago, Ill. ; Camp Butler, Springfield, Ill. ; Alton, Ill. ; Rock Island, Ill. ; Cairo, Ill. ; Saint Louis, Mo.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., November 27, 1863.

F. N. KNAPP, Esq.,

Associate Secretary Sanitary Commission,

244 F Street, Washington, D. C.:

SIR: I have the pleasure of acknowledging the receipt of your note of yesterday, and with it the interesting report of the condition of the prisoners at Point Lookout by a member of the commission, for which permit me to return you my thanks. In reply to your request that a permit may be granted to Doctor McDonald to visit the prison camps for the purpose of inspection, I beg to say that medical inspectors of the army make frequent inspections of the camps referred to, and it is therefore not thought necessary to impose this labor on the Sanitary Commission.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners.

WAR DEPARTMENT,

Washington City, November 27, 1863.

Lieutenant JACOB PARROTT,

Company K, Thirty-third Regiment Ohio Vols., Chattanooga, Tenn.:

SIR: In reply to the letter of yourself and Lieutenant Daniel A. Dorsey, stating that Lieutenants E. H. Mason and John R. Porter, Twenty-first Ohio Volunteers, who belonged to General Mitchel's bridge-burning party, were recaptured by the rebels at Chickamauga, and that the former is again detained as a spy, the Secretary of War directs me to say that communication has been referred to the commissioner for the exchange of prisoners, whose attention has been specially invited to the cases of Lieutenants Mason and Porter.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ED. R. S. CANBY,

Brigadier-General and Assistant Adjutant-General.

WASHINGTON, November 27, 1863.

Colonel E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General, U. S. Army:

SIR: I arrived in this city yesterday after an imprisonment of nearly five months as a prisoner of war in Libbly Prison, Richmond, Va., and