same mail, inclosing communications from the Spanish Legation (in translation), dated the 28th of June, the 7th and 26th of August, respectively, directing me to report fully to the Department all the facts and circumstances connected with the arrival and departure of the Spanish ship Cardenas and the U. S. ship Roanoke at the port of New Orleans in June last, and also full explanations of the facts involved in the communication of the Spanish consul and others of the administration of the quarantine laws in this department, I beg leave to submit the history of such administration and specially in regard to the Cardenas and Roanoke, Pinta, and Maria Galante.

Let me premise, however, that the questions so far as these vessels or any others are concerned, except for the purpose of reclamation and complaint, have long ceased to be of practical importance, as the Cardenas has made one trip to Cuba and back since the occurrence complained of, and the Pinta and Maria Galante, Spanish transports for tobacco, have loaded and gone home, I had supposed, entirely satisfied with their treatment at this port.

When New Orleans was captured it was found in the utmost possible filthy condition. Because of the troublous times the contractors upon all the streets and canals had utterly neglected to comply with their contracts for cleansing and purifying the streets, and the filth was indescribable.

In view of this most alarming sanitary condition of the city and the approach of the epidemic season, after consultation with the most eminent local physicians who would give advice (some refusing to give any opinion, with the apparent hope that the pestilence would do what their rebel arms could not-drive us out), and acting with the advice of my medical staff, I took the most energetic measures to purify the city itself from the possibility of engendering disease, believing at the same time that the yellow fever was no more indigenous to New Orleans than the sugar cane, but must be imported or propagated as that is, by cuttings, and that a firmly administered quarantine, guided by science and honesty of purpose, discriminating as regards cargoes and cleanliness of ships, would effectually keep out the scourge of the city and prayed for as ally of the rebellion. Indeed, the quarantine to be enforced with these discriminations-not a procrustean period of quarantine to all.

A vessel with hides and wool, the adsorbents of the malaria, with a filthy hold reeking with dead and putrid organic matter, loaded at an infected port by infected hands, sown thick with the seeds of disease, only waiting for time and the warm sun to develop them into a plague, was not put on an equality as to time with a steamer for passengers kept clean and sweet as a mercantile necessity to procure business-laden with flour, tight casks of salted provisions, and round shot and shell, which would not be likely either to absolve or generate contagion. Again, the length of time in which a ship and cargo had been exposed to the danger of the contagion had much to do with the quarantine.

A ship belonging in an infected port, loaded there, her cargo either the product or manufacture of that port, her crew acclimated and therefore indifferent to sanitary regulations and appliances, required to be kept under quarantine longer to watch the probable development of disease and to await the operation of the purification than a vessel loaded at a Northern port, where the frost insured health in this regard, and which had merely touched at a port afflicted with yellow fever and held communication with the shore under the restrictions imposed by the fears of unacclimated officers and crew.