DETROIT, MICH., June 25, 1862.

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM HOFFMAN,

Eighth Infty., Commissary-General of Prisoners, Detroit, Mich.

COLONEL: In compliance with your order dated Washington City, 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 Buffalo, N. Y., as to its condition when visited by me on or about the 23rd of June.

This camp is known as Camp Porter* and is at present entirely unoccupied. It is in the charge of Mr. Samuel Strong, a gentleman employed by the Government to take charge of the public buildings at Fort Porter. It is easily accessible from town, being located on a fine road about one mile and three-quarters from it in a northwest direction and on ground quite as high as the surrounding country and bordering Niagara River. It is nearly in the form of a rectangle, being about 320 by 300 yards. The soil is firm and hard, covered with grass, and there is not in the vicinity either marsh, standing water or forest, or any cause of malaria or disease. The camp is abundantly supplied with fine pure water from the city reservoir and fuel is delivered on the ground at $5, and $3. 50 or $4, the first price being that for hard wood, the latter for soft wood.

In the same inclosure are the temporary buildings erected by the Government and the permanent fort with its various buildings. The first are all new, of one story in height and of wooden frames covered with rough boards matched. The seam is again covered by an outer board. The sides and roof are covered in the same manner. They have good plank floors and pitched roofs, those of the barracks and guard-house being about fifteen feet at the ridge and eight at the caves, those of the mess hall and kitchens somewhat higher. The grounds are inclosed by a low fence of horizontal slats placed at intervals nailed to uprights. The barracks (temporary) number ten buildings placed in two lines at right angles to each other. They are each 60 feet by 18 and have bunks placed in each for the accommodation of 150 men, though they are unfitted for the reception of more than 100 in each. The bunks are double and arranged in three tiers, with the length at right angles with the length of the building. This leaves a passage of six feet wide at the middle of the building. The barracks are wretchedly ventilated and are unprovided with ticks for straw for the bunks. In each is a small room 7 by 5 feet used by the orderly sergeants.

In a large building south of these and dimensions of 236 by 66 feet are the mess halls and kitchen. The latter is 36 feet wide, 56 feet long, occupying the central part of the building, with the mess halls of 100 feet in length each at either end. At one end of the kitchen are three small rooms 10 by 12 feet used as store-rooms and outside of these is a large reservoir of cistern water. The roof of this part of the building is higher by about six feet than that of the mess halls. The latter will seat 600 men in each. One is well supplied with tables and benches and the other has but about one-half of the requisite number. The kitchen is very deficient in cooking apparatus and there is no bake-house.

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*See p. 83.

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