staff, and to Colonel Kappner, commanding First Pickering. To those officer, I am indebted for courteous attention and efficient aid during my stay at Memphis, and I take pleasure in commending their zeal, intelligence, and ability to your favorable notice:

First, Fort Pickering: I recommend that the interior work of Fort Pickering be surrounded by a formidable obstacle, either a stockade in the ditch or a row of palisades just beyond it, placed where it will be not only under the infantry fire of the work, but within the reach of hand grenades. Two of the bastion faces of the interior work are not flanked. This defect ought to be remedied. I mentioned the matter to Colonel Kappner, who understands what is to be done and how to do it.

Second, outworks to Fort Pickering (proposed): In order to prevent an enemy getting possession of the various ravines and bayous in advance of Fort Pickering, in which mortar batteries within easy shelling distance of the whole work could be established, I recommend that a line of small advanced works or outworks be constructed, each capable of being held by about 200 men. The faces of these works should be directed upon and flanked by batteries in the main work. Each should be surrounded by a formidable obstacle and the gorge should be closed by a palisading with a barrier at the entrance. In constructing these outworks the conditions should be vigorously imposed that every part of them, the parade as well as the ditch, shall be seen from the batteries of the main work, so that they can afford no cover to an enemy that obtains possession of them. There should, I think, be four of these advanced works located as follows, from right to left, viz: the first from 600 to 700 yards south of the extreme right of the main work, beyond the mouth of the deep bayou; the second, not far from a large brick house near where Coffer street prolonged intersects Fifth street; the third, near the intersection of Seventh street and Broadway, and the fourth, just to the north of Morris Cemetery, on the highest ground in that vicinity. These four advanced works, taken in connection with the right work, or Numbers 1 (on the Horn Lake road), of the exterior line of detached works projected by Colonel Kappner, which should be surrounded by an obstacle and inclosed at the gorge, would render Fort Pickering comparatively secure from shelling within destructive ranges and from the fire of sharpshooters. I would recommend the immediate completion of the five works above named.

Third. With regard to the exterior line of detached works, established and commenced by Colonel Kappner, I would recommend its completion as secondary in importance to the works above designated, for it would be a powerful auxiliary to an active defense of the city of Memphis. These works should be connected by rifle-pits of such profile as would not greatly impede the movements of infantry, but would stop a charge of cavalry. In each work I would prepare a position for a light battery, to be thrown upon the line whenever and wherever its fire should be required. At suitable positions, 200 to 400 yards in rear of the intervals between the works, I would place in light rifle-pits the immediate reserves of the line, to be thrown forward at the proper moment to repel assaults or restore the line if broken. The general reserves might be further back at some point central to the whole line.

Armament, Fort Pickering main work: The following named forty-three pieces in the main work, including the water battery, are mounted on unserviceable carriages, either worn out, decayed, or of such defective pattern and make that they cannot be worked with any degree of efficiency, viz, thirty-one 32-pounders, nine 8-inch sea-coast howitzers, two 8-inch columbiads, and one 10-inch columbiad. At my suggestion