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Too much cannot be said of the desire to learn among this people. Everywhere, to open a school has been to have it filled. Everywhere, a reciprocity of interest dictates facilities for education, and private and plantation schools are supplementing, and perhaps exceed, the more conspicuous efforts.

From time to time, and where they could be useful, colored men have been employed, usually as assistants, with a view to raising up teachers from their own race to perpetuate the work among the freedmen.

In the absence of an appropriation as has been said, a fund has been created under an order of the President, for the maintenance of the Bureau, and from property rescued (in great part through the vigilance of its agents,) from the wreck of the rebellion.

A charge for registering contracts, of twenty-five cents for each laborer included, was collected from employers at the time, and a small sum was received from fines imposed by a Provost Court in operation a few months at Mobile; but neither of these was a source of considerable revenue.

In November $5,000 was received from your office, to be repaid when practicable, and prior to the beginning of the New Year $9,734 09 was secured under the President's order and from other sources.

In February, the Briarfield Iron Works, which had been extensively advertised by the Treasury Department, were sold at public auction for forty-five thousand dollars. The incidental expenses, which were large, were defrayed from other sources, and this sum received intact.

Three Confederate vessels, aground in the Tombigbee, and turned over by capitulation, were taken care of for some months, and finally got off at high water and brought down to Mobile. One of them was sold, accrued expenses on the three were paid, and $27,351 93 netted to the Bureau. The other two eventually went into the U. S. District Court, where they still are. In all, the sum of $102,491 84 has been received from different outside sources.

At the close of July was received your circular No. 9, giving notice of congressional appropriations for the Bureau, and directing that disbursing officers remit to your office the moneys in their hands. The sum of $45,785 10 was accordingly remitted. Since that time $24,312 97 has been received from the appropriation, and of the sum sent forward, $4,317 has been returned for use under the 12th section of the act extending the duration of the Bureau:

"The Commissioner shall have the power to seize, hold, use, lease, or sell all buildings and tenements, and any lands appertaining to the same, or otherwise, formerly held under color of title by the late so-called confederate states, and not heretofore disposed of by the United States, and any buildings or lands held in trust for the same by any person or persons, and to use the same or appropriate the proceeds derived therefrom to the education of the freed people."

The entire sum remitted as above from collections in this District, is controlled by the provisions, and so much as has not been returned is yet to be applied to purposes of education. Probably $40,000 more will ultimately be received from the same source, and this again may be further reinforced from the appropriation. A vigorous and careful effort will be made to develop a result in full proportion to the means.

The expenditures of the Bureau in this District have been chiefly those of administration. Payment for hospital and subsistence stores have been adjusted in the War Department, as were also those of the Quartermaster, for a time. The principal items of disbursement are presented in the statement of accounts which accompanies this paper. Some payments have been made of losses consequent upon attempts to farm on Government account before the Bureau was created, or the demand for freedmen's labor was apparent. These were unprofitable, as was to be expected, and were none of them renewed quite early in the year. The total of our payments has been $76,080 67. The sum received back from your office upon all accounts, is $17,155 13 less than that remitted to it.