Mr.
Washburne informs me that there are still about 250 Americans here, of whom about forty are women.

Some of them remain to look after their homes, others out of curiosity.

"I regard," said an American lady to me to-day, who had been in a southern city (Vicksburg, if I remember rightly), when it was under fire, "a bombardment as the finest and most interesting effort of pyrotechnical skill, and I want to see if you Europeans have developed this art as fully as we have, which I doubt." _October 2nd._ I wrote to General Trochu yesterday to ask him to allow me to accompany him outside the walls to witness military operations.

His secretary has sent me a reply to-day regretting that the General cannot comply with my request.

The correspondent of the _Morning Post_ interviewed the secretary yesterday on the same subject, but was informed that as no _laisser passer_ was recognised by the Mobiles, and as General Trochu had himself been arrested, the Government would not take upon itself the responsibility of granting them.