perations, to post the guards of the trenches,
to repulse sorties, and to protect the works. The works to be
constructed were indicated and laid out by the Chief Engineer,
whose duties, after the 17th of June, when Major Houston fell
seriously ill, were performed by Captain John C. Palfrey, aided
and overlooked by General Andrews, the Chief of Staff. Daily, at
nine o'clock in the morning, the General of the Trenches and the
Chief Engineer made separate reports to headquarters of everything
that had happened during the previous day. Each of these officers
made five reports, yet of the ten but two are to be found printed
among the Official Records. These are the engineer's reports of
work done on the 5th and 6th of July. They contain almost the only
details of the siege to be gathered from the record, notwithstanding
the fact that every paper, however small, or irregular in size or
form, or apparently unimportant in substance, that related in any
way to the military operations of the Army of the Gulf was carefully
preserved on the files of its Adjutant-General's office, where,
for safety as well as convenience, documents of this character were
kept separate from the ordinary files covering matters of routine
and requiring to be handled every day or hour. The proof is strong
that these important records were in due time delivered into the
custody of the War Office, where, for a considerable period after
the close of the war, little or no care seems to have been taken
of the documents thus turned in by the several Corps and Departments,
as these were discontinued; and although the care and management
of the War Records division of the Adjutant-General's Office at
Washington has, from its earliest organization, been such as to
deserve the highest admiration, yet many of these papers are not
to be found there. The probability is that they were either mislaid
or else swept away and destroyed before this office was organized.

Palfrey's report for the 5th of July shows the left cavalier finished
and occupied, and the right cavalier nearly finished, but constantly
injured by a 24-pounder gun that had so far escaped destruction by
the artillery of the besiegers. The sap in front of Bainbridge's
battery, No. 8, was advanced about twenty yards during this day,
and the parallel in front of the priest-cap extended to the left
eleven yards; work was greatly retarded by a heavy rain in the
night. The mine was so far advanced