is the building containing the mess halls and kitchen under one roof. The two mess halls occupy the two ends of the building and the kitchens the middle portion. The former are 144 by 41 feet each and are provided with tables and benches for the accommodation of 1,000 men each, who can easily be seated in them. The kitchen is 64 by 41 feet and is amply supplied with boilers, furnaces, ranges and steam apparatus, and the materials requisite to cook for 2,000 men at the same time. There is no bake-house and the same arrangement is made for supplying the food by contract and at the same price as at the Rathbun barracks, the food being cooked and placed on the tables and table furniture provided. The sinks are insufficient, filthy and in bad order. Wood is delivered on the ground at $2. 50 for hard and $2 for soft. The camp is designed for 2,000 men, but with additional bunks and a different arrangement of them 3,000 can readily be received, while the grounds are quite large enough, except for military exercises.

Accompanying this description is a plan of the camp and buildings with reference marks. Note: There is on a line with the guard-house a sutler's store 30 by 18 feet. Elmira is connected by railroad with Harrisburg, Pa., and the distance by this route to Baltimore is 202 miles less than by way of Albany and New York City.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

H. M. LAZELLE,

Captain, Eighth Infantry, U. S. Army.

DETROIT, MICH., June 25, 1862.

Colonel WILLIAM HOFFMAN,

Commissary-General of Prisoners, Detroit, Mich.

COLONEL: In compliance with your order dated Washington, June 12, 1862, requiring me to visit the permanent camps at Albany, Utica, Rochester and Elmira and the U. S. barracks at Buffalo to ascertain their capacity for quartering troops and to make to you a written report thereon accompanied by a general plan of each camp, I have the honor to submit the result of my examination of the camp so specified at Rochester, N. Y., as its condition when visited by me on or near the 22nd instant.

This camp is known as the Camp of the State Fair Grounds. * The grounds were rented by the Government at $100 per month for the first three months occupied; after that period at $50 per month. It erected on them quarters for 1,000 men, mess hall, kitchen, guard-house, stables, officers' quarters, sinks, &c., and for a considerable period occupied them with volunteer troops. Within a few months, however, the buildings so erected and the furnishings contained in them have been sold, and they together with the grounds are now in possession of the authorities of the State Fair who contemplate holding there a fair in September next.

The barracks, mess halls and kitchens are now being removed of their furniture for that purpose. It occupies a fine situation, being located on an excellent road about two miles southeast from town on a plot of ground gently sloping, of a rectangular shape, being 400 by 800 yards. The soil is firm and hard at all times--is composed of gravel covered with sward. The camp at present contains no troops. The ground is quite as high as the surrounding country and there is not in its vicinity either marsh, standing water or forest or any locus of malaria or disease.

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*See p. 77.

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