boat to Wilmington Island, that they had been last seen going into Turner's Creek, and were now missing. The guard boat was left at the usual place opposite Hunter's farm over night. At dawn on the 31st the guard were revised and partly relieved by Captain Hinckel, who then made a patrol to Dannenfelser's horse, and was told that Dannenfelser and the two men had been there for half an hour the previous day, and then had departed. Captain Hinckel also captured a negro in the act of entertaining communiation between the fort and Savannah. The guard was intructed to keep a sharp lookout along the shore for our missing men. At noon Lieutenant Service was sent to relieve the guard, and with the instruction to search at the same time Gibson's and Screven's farms for the missing and for interlopers, but not to proceed farther. At 4 o'clock Captain Hinckel went with the captured negro for verifying his description at the cuts used for smuggling. He came back at 8 o'clock and reported that no trace of the guard and relief boats was to be found.

On the evening of the 1st of April we received promptly a re-enforcement of two officers and thirty men of the Forty-sixth New Yourk, and one 6-pounder at the Montezuma. At 10 o'clock in the same night Lieutenants Serviere and Rettig and fifteen men in the relief boat returned and reported as follows: When the relief boat met the guard boat at Hunter's farm they both proceeded to Gibson's house, the relief boat in advance, the guard boat (with the small old iron 6-pounder, private property of the subscriber) bringing up the rear. At Gibson's they saw two men; then Lieutenant Service with fifteen men landed and found himself soon engaged in a skirmishing fight with about thirty rebels, whom he successfully drove out of the houses and the farm, killing at least one of them. When the guard boat nearer the landing Lieutenant Rettig also jumped ashore, but the helmsman, a canal boat-man promoted to a sergeant's position since two days, suddenly lost his self-possession entirely, backed the boat off, and droped back with the tide. Lieutenant Serviere then took to the relief boat, which during the time had filled with water, and had to be bailed out, and set afloat again under cover of a chain of skirmishers. They left without any loss, though fired at repeatedly, adn then saw in the distance that the guard boat had drifted on the flats between Screven's and Hunter's place; that a fire was opened against it at about fifty paces distance, by, at the least estimation, about sixty men; that the men laid themselves flat on the botom of the boat and waved their caps as sign of surrender. The relief boat then took to the small creek and swamps between Oatland Creek and Wilmington Narrows, was fast aground over night, and succeeded in coming back late the next evening by way of the narrows andthe stockade. The total loss, therefore, consists of eighteen enlisted men, the man Dannenfelser, and about twelve rounds of ammuniton. Two boats and one small iron 6-pounder were also lost, being prizes of the Forty-sixth Regiment New Yourk State Volunteers, and not belonging to the United States. There seems to be a detemination to keep up at all events the communicaton to the fort by way of Whitemars and Wilmington Islands and the very fully propose to keep a small armed steam-boat there.

Your most obedient servant,

RUDOLPH ROSA,

Colonel, Commanding Forty-sixth Regiment New York State Vols.

General Q. A. GILLMORE,

Commanding.

[6.]