of water into the city of Washington. It was necessary to bring this supply from the great Falls of the Potomac through a conduit nine feet in diameter. The work was energetically prosecuted, and when finished was found capable of delivering nearly seventy million gallons of water, at an elevation of fourteen feet above the upper floor of the Capitol.*

Mr. Davis recommended the erection of a fire-proof building adequate to the needs of the War Department; but this work was not undertaken until after the inauguration of the war against the Southern States.

A splendid stone aqueduct, a few miles from Washington, built during Mr. Davis's term as Secretary of War, still remains a monument to his earnest labors for the benefit of the Capitol. It is known as "Cabin John Bridge," it has a span of 220 fcet, and is the longest in the world.

During the war between the States his name, deeply cut in the solid granite blocks, was, either by the order of Secretary of War Stanton, or the Secretary of the Interior, Caleb B. Smith, erased.

CHAPTER XXXV.

MR. DAVIS'S SECOND REPORT.

MR. DAVIS opened his second report as Secretary of War (presented to Congress December 4, 1854), with the gratifying announcement that the difference between the authorized and actual strength of the army was fast disappearing under the operation of the law (passed at his urgent recommendation in August) "to increase the pay of the rank and file of the army and to encourage enlistments." The actual strength was 10,745, against an authorized strength of 14,216.

After tersely describing the distribution of the force, he proceeded to report the military operations of the past year. The Seminole Indians still occupied Southern Florida, owing to the failure of all efforts by the Interior Department to dislodge them, but active measures had been taken to reduce them. By opening roads, by the use of boats adapted to the navigation of the lakes, swamps, and bayous, which had hitherto enabled the Indians to elude pursuit, the Department was acquiring an accurate knowledge of the coun

try, and by cutting off their trade was inspiring the Indians with a conviction of their inability to escape from, or resist the power of, the United States.

In other departments there had been repeated collisions between Indians and our troops in Texas (with the Sioux), in New Mexico, on the Pacific coast, and on the Plains, showing the insufficiency of small posts, the deplorable inadequacy of our military force, and the absolute necessity of the increase which the Secretary had urgently recommended in his first report.

Presenting the statistics of the five military departments into which the territory of the United States was divided, the Secretary showed the inadequacy of the standing army, never exceeding 11,000 men, to protect a seaboard and foreign frontier of more than 10,000 miles, an Indian frontier and routes through the Indian country of more than 8,000 miles, and an Indian population of more than 400,000, of whom, probably one-half, or 40,000 warriors, are inimical, and only wait the opportunity to become active enemies.*

Again the Secretary urged an increase of

During this year Lieutenant Gunnison, who was sent with an expedition across to Salt Lake, was waylaid by the Indians and murdered. His young wife recovered his mutilated remains. He was a brilliant officer.

the small regular army. The progress of settlement involved a possibility of further collisions with the Indians; for, as our population pressed westward from the Missouri, it forced the savage tribes into narrower limits and an unproductive region, which not only enabled bands hitherto separate to com. bine for war, but provoked it by diminishing their ability to live by the precarious products of the chase. Recent experience of Indian war showed that an increase in our army would be a measure of economy. The cost of the war with the Sac and Fox Indians, in 1832, amounted to more than three millions of dollars; the definite appropriations for the suppression of Indian hostilities, from 1836 to 1841, inclusive, amounted to more than eighteen millions of dollars. Within the last few years large appropriations had been made for the same object in Texas, New Mexico, Utah, California, and Oregon. The aggregate of such appropriations for the last twenty-two years, independent of the regular army, was estimated at more than thirty millions of dollars, a sum sufficient to have maintained, during the whole period, the adequate military force asked for in his first report. This vast sum, also, was independent of the expenditure for property destroyed, compensation to the suffering inhabitants, and did