and light artillery, were, on the 4th of October, on their arrival at Cape Girardeau from the interior of Arkansas, embarked on forty small transports, under the direction of Captain L. s. Metcalf, assistant quartermaster, and rapidly proceeded up the Mississippi and Missouri to Jefferson City, a distance of 325 miles. During the same time Captain Metcalf transported the Sixteenth Army Corps, 16,000 men, Major General A. J. smith commanding, from Jefferson Barracks to Jefferson City. Owing to the extreme low water of the Missouri, these movements were made with great difficulty, but fortunately without loss of life or any serious accident. Subsequently, after the retreat of General Price toward Arkansas and on the advance of the rebel General Hood into Tennessee, the Sixteenth Army Corps was rapidly embarked on twenty-seven steamers by Captain Metcalf, and reached Nashville, a distance of 636 miles form Jefferson City, just in tme to take a brillinat and important part in the great battle of Nashville. For the particulars of these movements I would respectfully refer to the report of Captain Metcalf, a copy of which is herewith transmitted.

On the 5th and 6th of February last the Sixteenth Army Corps, with its artillery, consisting of about 16,000 men, with 5,000 of Wilson's cavalry, together with their horses, were embarked on the Tennessee River at Eastport, Miss., under the direction of Colonel A. J. Mackay, chief quartermaster of the Department of the Cumberland, on forty-three transports and seven tow-boats, with barges assembled there by Colonel Arthur Edwards. Leaving that point on the 7th, the fleet passed down the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi to Vicksburg, the point of destination, where it arrived the 15th of the same month. Most of the army subsequently re-embarked on the 18th for New Orleans, and reached that point on the 21st, a distance of 1,335 miles from the point of departure, and in fourteen days after embarkation on the Tennessee, including five days' detention. During the war there were numerous other expeditins by water, consisting of from 1,000 to 20,000 troops, moving from different points, greater or less distance on the Mississippi or its tributaries, to which I do not particularly allude, though some of them were important and interesting.

Early in January, 1865, General Grant desired the presence of the Twenty-third Army Corps, then at Eastport, Miss., before making his great movement about Richmond. He hesitated ordering it, however, under the apprehension that owing to the period of the yeary and the severe weather, it would be impracticable to transport so large an army that distance, through a Norhthern climate and over the mountains, in sufficient time to answer his purpose, from forty to sixty days being considered as the shortest period in which the movements could safely be effected. It was finally decided to make the attempt, and on the 11th day of January, under the orders of the Secretary of War, I proceeded to the Tennessee and took the general charge and supervision of the movement, which resulted in the transfer of the corps, consisting of 20,000 men, with all its artillery and over 1,000 animals, from the Tennessee River to the city of Washington, a distance of nearly 1,400 miles, in the month of January, during the severest weather of the winter, and over rivers and mountains blocked with snow and ice, in an average time of eleven days, less than seventeen days having elapsed between the embarkation of the first troops on the Tennessee to the arrival of the last in Washington, without the loss of property or a single life, a movemnt characterized by the Secretary of War as the most remarkable and successful of its kind in history, and for a full