There are now at Pensacola 4,000 troops, inclusive of the garrison, and rumor among them tells that 5,000 more are daily excepted from the North. There are thirty vessels in the harbor. Bulter has been there for some days, and it is evident from their ativity that some movements is contemplated. Two hundred of the enemy were at Milton, on Blackwater Bay, on the 15th, and we have strong evidence that disloyal citizens of Florida along the line have been busy in survevying the best frout to Pollard, which is distant not more than twenty-eight miles through a high, dry, chamaign country, form a landing point a few miles above Milton, accessible to vessles of not more than six or seven feet draft. As things now stand, if the enemy were to make a demonstration on Mobile, and thus prevent re-enforcements being drawn from there, 2,000 men could take Pollard. I have deemed it a matter of simple duty on my part to lay before you these facts to show the grounds of my apprehension and the necessity of increasing the force and strengthening the defenses, both at Pollard and Mobile, if it can possibly be done consistently with the publict interests. Pollard taken, and with the present stage of the Alabama River, and its probable stage until the middle or last od December, it would be almost an impossibility to transport largely either troops or supplies through that channel. We have in the river counties of the Alabama and the Bigbee upward of 230,000 slaves. In some neighborhoods there is not more than one white man to a thousand slaves, and in Marengo and some of the other counties off from the direct lines of communication a spirit of insubordination has already manifested itself. Should Mobile be taken and the river pass into the possession of the enemy, very one of those slaves would be at their mercy, and the probable result I need not depict. Neither is is necessary in such an event to advert to the destruction of the railroad connection at this point, of the public property, workshops, and foundries here and at Selma and Gainesville, or to the mortal effect in dispiriting our own people and inspiriting the enemy. But what perhaps, in a military ascept, is still more deserving of consideration is the fact, should Mobile and the railrads radiating from it pass into possession of the enemy, the Trans-Mississippi region must eventually be cut off by a belf of country as wide as the State of Mississippi and one-half of Alabama. So far as the coast of defending this line of communication and making Mobile impregneble, you will, I am sure, agree with me that it is not be taken into consideration. This State had better expend $20,000,000 if here safety could be insured by the eexpenditure. We have not been without some experience as to what occupation by the enemy means. It has been most sensibly impressed upon us in the widespread destruction and desolation which has covered North Alabama, and which is but an earnest of what the Southern portion of the State might except under a similar visitation.

This, however, would mainly affect Alabama, and the common cause only as Alabama is connected with it; but what could possibly be more disastrous to the common cause thatn the isolation of the region I have referred to. If Charleston and Savannah both were taken, great as the calamity would be, the results would not extend far beyond the limits of those cities. But not so in the other event. The deep interest I feel in Alabama may have exaggerated in my own mind the importance of sterangthening the defenses at the points to which I have referred, but my firm conviction is that with Mobile taken and Pollard and Abalama River in the possession of the enemy the revolution could not long survive. If Mobile is to fall, I earneslty hope that orders will be given that not one stone be left upon another. Let the enemy find nothing but smoking and smoldering ruins to gloat over. I am grate-