the objections to Grant's Pass, as Cedar Point is part of the main-land, with good road easing into the back country.

The idea of our caricature gunboats being a protection to the coast trade is to me simply ridiculous. In truth I should look on our Navy Department as an amusing fancy sketch but for the waste of money and corruption for which it is the excuse.

In that I am tormented by hourly applications from selfish boat-owners for permits through Grant's Pass, you will oblige me by telegraphing me at the earliest moment the decision of the general as to this trade being stopped promptly and finally. The railroad communication and reduced charges prevent the necessity for all undue risks to keep the coast trade open. We cannot, therefore, afford to furnish the enemy the low-water transportation, which they can only get by taking our boats, as well as the produce of our country.

The coast being within General Lovell's department, I have nothing to recommend for its being properly guarded.

Very respectfully, major, your obedient servant,

J. M. WITHERS,

Brigadier-General, &c.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE, Numbers 264.
Richmond, Va., December 12, 1861.

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16. The command of Major-General Bragg is extended west, so as to include Pascagoula Bay and that portion of Mississippi east of the Pascagoula River.

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By command of the Secretary of War:

JNO. WITHERS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

JACKSON, MISS., December 12, 1861.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS:

Lincoln boats continually harassing our sea-coast. Our people will be driven from their homes and their property destroyed. Third Regiment Mississippi Volunteers have been ordered from the coast to kentucky; many of them sailors, and much needed. Please order them back to seaport and keep them there.

JOHN J. PETTUS.

RICHMOND, VA., December 13, 1861.

Gov. JOHN. J. PETTUS,

Jackson, Miss.:

Keep the regiment to which you refer on the sea-coast until further orders. There is a confusion in numbering the regiments, so that I cannot tell which one it is. We will endeavor to organize a force better adapted to sea-coast defense than an infantry regiment, and duly inform you.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.