These and kindred consideration which will readily suggest themselves to your mind were the controlling guides to the very intelligent medical officers who were in charge at quarantine, as they were to my own, upon the necessity and length of detention of vessels.

We, however, determined always to err, if at all, upon the safe side, holding ever the far greater importance of the lives of a large city and an army committed to our charge than the possible damage to any commercial adventure from detention.

I need not assure you, sir, that the question of nationality never entered into our thought in the exercise of our judgment and powers, except in one possible relation. We could not help looking with a little less care to and holding under advisement a little less time a vessel of a nation proverbial for the neatness of their ships and goods as compared with one who enjoyed an unenviable reputation the other way. With these theories and upon these bases have the quarantine and health laws been administered at New Orleans up to the 1st day of October.

I can point with ahe results as an explanation and a vindication of my acts and administration in this particular. Pardon me if I add that I claim for this triumph of science, integrity, firmness, and skill of my medical staff, by which thousands of lives have been saved and by far the most dreaded foe driven from the city of New Orleans, as much credit as if by the disposition of my troops we had won a victory over the less deadly but hardly less implacable enemy in a conflict of arms.

Up to this date there has been no malignant or epidemical or virulent fevers or deceases in New Orleans, and its mortality returns show it to be the most healthy city in the United States. In one regiment, the Thirteenth Connecticut, quartered in the customhouse since the 15th of May, but one man was lost during the months of July and August.

His Excellency Mr. Tassara, the Spanish minister, is most grievously misinformed when he says to the Secretary of State that the salubrity of New Orleans is no better than that of the island of Cuba. We have had the malignant yellow fever all around us-at Havana, at Nassau, at Matanzas, at Galveston, at Matamoras, at Vera Cruz, at Key West, at Pensacola, and at Mobile. The rebels have imported it into Attakapas and Sabine Pass in their running the blockade to the salubrious island of Cuba. Our quarantine has been more perfect than the blockade.

We have had serious cases of yellow fever at the quarantine, only seventy-five miles from us, and but a single one at New Orleans, and this one at once justifies and illustrates our sanitary regulations. The U. S. steamship Ida, having touched at Nassay only, and no disease having been reported as existing there at the time of her departure, was permitted to pass up by the health officers after fumigation and other precautions. The day her arrival in the city one of her passengers on shore was taken sick and on the sixth day died, an unmistakable case of malignant yellow fever.

The most stringent measures were taken to isolate the disease. Everything which touched or was about the deceased was buried, acclimated persons only were allowed to do the last sad offices, the house in which he died was most thoroughly purified, and by the blessing of "Him who holdeth all in the hollow of His hand" the pestilence was stayed. The steamer was at once ordered below, where she is undergoing quarantine. Even while I write this the English consul reports the British brig Valentine to me at the mouth of the