OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. [CHAP. XII.

trees across it and filling it up with rock the cliffs, commencing on the London side of the Rockcastle River, and extending as far back as the Natural Bridge, on the Big Hill, and station your men at the most advantageous position and defend the road. Also send men and have the road from the Richmond to the Mount Vernon road obstructed so that troops cannot march along it.

Do anything in your power to keep the enemy from crossing Rockcastle River.

Respectfully, &c.,

GEO. H. THOMAS, Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS CAMP DICK ROBINSON, September 30, 1861.

Major General GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, Commanding Department of the Potomac:

GENERAL: I have just had a conversation with Mr. W. B. Carter, of Tennessee, on the subject of the destruction of the Grand Trunk Railroad through that State. He assures me that he can have it done if the Government will instruct him with small sum of money to give confidence to the persons to be employed to do it. It would be one of the most important services that could be done for the country, and I most earnestly hope you will use your influence with the authorities in furtherance of his plans, which he will submit to you, together with the reasons for doing the work.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

GEO. H. THOMAS, Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS CAMP DICK ROBINSON, October, 1861,

Captain OLIVER D. GREENE, Assistant Adjutant-General, U. S. Army, Headquarters Department of Cumberland, Louisville, Ky.:

CAPTAIN: I have the honor to report that General Mitchel has ordered the Seventeenth Ohio Regiment to report to me immediately, an will send four more, with two batteries of artillery, as rapidly as they can come. This force will be sufficient for the defense of this position at present, and I have respectfully to ask that hereafter troops may be assembled at Camp Dennison and held in readiness to move whenever I may call for them. An encampment at Lexington also would be very could call upon them from here to move either by this road or by the road through Richmond, according to circumstances.

I have at last found a gentleman who seems to comprehended the duties of the quartermaster's department, and I am in hopes we may be able to get along with less confucian than heretofore.

The enemy is still held beyond the Rockcastle Hills, and I am in hopes in two days more we shall have those hills sufficiently fortified to prevent any further advance.

Colonel Hoskins was permitted by me to go to Pulaski County to see about the organization of his regiment. On the 29th ultimo, soon after