can better estimate the price that should be charged for freight. I have most respectfully to ask for instructions relative to the Indian prisoners that I have (the capture of whom I reported to the colonel June 30), what I shall do with them, and how I am, to feed them, &c. I believe it requires an order from headquarters to allow my acting assistant quartermaster and acting commissary of subsistence to issue rations to them. If so, you will please to attend to the matter by laying the facts bl commanding the Department of the Pacific. I wish again most respectfully to call the attention of the colonel to the fact that I have but four Government wagons and teams, and that if I should be ordered to return to-morrow or to go anywhere else it would be impossible for me to move with the limited transportation that I have at my command. I should have at least four more wagons and teams, which would make two for each company, one for the quartermaster's department and one for the ammunition.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

GEO. S. EVANS,

Lieutenant Colonel Second Cavalry California Volunteers, Commanding.

Lieutenant WILLIAM FORRY,

Adjutant Fourth Infantry California Volunteers, Camp Latham.

HEADQUARTERS OWEN'S RIVER EXPEDITION,
Camp Independence, Owen's River Valley, July 9, 1862.

MAJOR: I have the honor to report to the general commanding the Department of the Pacific that I have been in this valley fifteendays, carrying out my instructions tochastise these Indians, or the Indians of Owen's River; that I have killed several, taken eleven prisoners, and destroyed a great many rancherias and a large quantity of seeds, worms, &c., that the Indians had gathered for food. Day before yesterday, July 7, I received a note by the hands of a messenger sent from a detachment of my command thirty miles above this point stating that Captain Rowe, of Company A, with the sub-Indian agent, Mr. Wassen, and his interpreters and ten men, were on the opposite side of the river; that they had seen and talked with the Indian chiefs and made a treaty with them. I immediately sent men to the river with led horses for Captain Rowe and Mr. Wassen to ride after crossing the river, and requested Captain Rowe to come over and report tome the facts in the case. At 2 o'clock Sergeant Ethier came to my camp and stated that Captain Rowe's heath was bad and the river was out of its banks and would have to be swam by him in order to reach me; begged that I would come down to the river, that we might talk from bank to bank. I immediately saddled my horse and rode down to the river, and finding it almost impossible to talk from bank to bank in consequence of the sloughs on either side of the river being swimming, I resolved to cross myself. After swimming two sloghs and the river and wading half a miles through willows and tulles, I reached the eastern bank of Owen's River, where captain Rowe was camped, and spent the night with him. I found that Captain Rowe had been for some time previous encamped at the Adobe Meadows, twenty-five miles this side of Aurora and ninety-five miles above this point; that he was acting under orders from headquarters Department of the Pacific and endeavoring to make peace with the Indians, while I was under instructions to chastise them severely; that the captain had performed his duty with judgment and energy and had,