and open headlands, he produces the impression that his forces are ten times as numerous as they really are. He has moved but one DIVISION from Haynes' Bluff, and has General Parke's corps still encamped at Milldale, in front of Haynes' Bluff, where it was places on its first arrival. His right, under Osterhaus, still rests on the railroad bridge across the Big Black. Scouts before mentioned say that Price and E. Kirby Smith combined are about to attempt to provision Vicksburg by way of Milliken's Bend, which they will try to capture. A vast number of small boats have lately been prepared in Vicksburg. Of the siege, there is nothing of importance to report since my last dispatch. McPherson has not yet succeeded in placing batteries or rifle-pits in the breach made by the explosion of the 25th. He is now busily engaged in mining the adjoining fort on the left of the one whose bastion he then blew up. Rockets were thrown up in Vicksburg last night and night before last, and they were answered from a point on the Louisiana side opposite Warrenton.

C. A. DANA

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War.

NEAR Vicksburg, MISS., June 28, 1863-9 a. m.,

VIA MEMPHIS, July 1-4 p. m.

(Received July 3-11 a. m.)

No progress has been made in the siege since my last dispatch. On Sherman's front, enemy yesterday morning sprung a mine, which destroyed those Sherman's engineers had nearly finished, and threw the head of his sap into confusion generally. The engineers have gone back some 50 feet to run a new mine under the fort. The gully will not be less than one and a quarter hundred feet in length, and will require several days to complete. On McPherson's front nothing has been accomplished. An attempt is now being made to raise a cavalier work on the parapet of the crater formed by the recent explosion. Sand-bags are to be laid up, if possible, with loop-holes for sharpshooters, and short rifle-pits dung on each flank, with the design of driving the enemy from the interior of the fort; but this effort is of doubtful success, for the enemy maintain a most obstinate defense, and with their handgrenades render it difficult for our working parties to remain in the crater at all. The wounds inflicted by those missiles are frightful. The working parties of Ord are also getting near enough to be checked by hand-grenades, while Lauman, while farther from the rebel lines, is almost nightly assailed by little sorties of the enemy. He loses one or two men every night, and sometimes more, generally by carelessness, and lately had one of his rifle-pits filled up by a party that made a dash upon him. Herron, too, has been stopped for the last two nights by the brightness of the moonlight, which has enabled the enemy to fire at his men on fatigue duty. The heat of the weather, the unexpected length of the siege, the absence of any thorough organization of the engineer department, and the general belief of our officers and men that the town must presently fall into our hands without any special effort or sacrifice, all conspire to produce comparative inactivity and inefficiency on our part.

Captain Prime, chief engineer of the department, went north yesterday, very sick. Captain Comstock succeeds him as chief engineer. Captain [Miles D.] McAlester arrived yesterday; succeeds Comstock in charge of the lines of Ord. Lauman, and Herron, while Comstock, in