III. The slashings and abatis about the defenses of works in this district will be carefully protected by the troops and preserved; no interference with them will be permitted.

By order of Brigadier General Henry Prince:

S. W. WALDRON, JR.,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

GENERAL ORDERS, Numbers 3.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF THE PAMLICO,
Washington, N. C., April 29, 1863.

Paragraph I of General Orders, Numbers 2, Headquarters District of the Pamlico, Washington, N. C., April 28, 1863, is hereby rescinded.

By command of Brigadier General Henry Prince, commanding district:

S. W. WALDRON, JR.,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF THE PAMLICO,
Washington, N. C., April 29, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel SOUTHARD HOFFMAN,

Assistant Adjutant-General, Eighteenth Army Corps:

COLONEL: I have the honor to report the following interesting facts, showing how by timely orders to a grand guard I probably saved it from capture:

On visiting the pickets over the river day before yesterday, the day on which I took command here, I found a grand guard (1 captain, 2 lieutenants, and 70 enlisted men of infantry, and 2 cavalry soldiers) stationed at the cross-roads. Considering them so much out of place as to be a mere invitation to the enemy to come and take them, I ordered all the vedettes to be called in at once, so that no time should be lost, and that the force should retire with all dispatch to inside of Red Hill, defining the position to be occupied. This was at 11 o'clock a. m.

I have to-day the most perfectly reliable intelligence that at 12 m. day before yesterday, Daniel's brigade (five counted regiments and some cavalry) arrived near the chapel which is 1 mile from the crossroads toward Greenville. They halted half a mile before reaching the chapel and "made ready for a fight and sent forward the cavalry to the cross-roads." But the informant does not know why the cavalry soon returned, when the brigade immediately marched back on the Greenville road and made their headquarters at Taft's Store, 15 miles from here.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

HENRY PRINCE,

Brigadier-General Volunteers, Commanding.

N. B.- A reliable man on the Greenville road this evening sent me this message:"They are all gone from Taft's Cross-Roads, but I do not know which way." Probably Taft's Store and Cross-Roads refer to same place, and that Daniel has gone to Virginia.

On the 26th the Fifty ninth North Carolina, a cavalry regiment in good condition employed on the north side throughout the siege, was relieved at its camp, 10 miles this side of Greenville, by the broken-down regiment of Claiborne. The former "went off for Suffolk." This informant is Private Ferris, a deserter from the Fifty-ninth.