Department in the interest of economy.  The efficiency of the postal service, it is believed, has also been much improved.  The Postmaster-General has also opened a correspondence through the Department of State with foreign governments proposing a convention of postal representatives for the purpose of simplifying the rates of foreign postage and to expedite the foreign mails.  This proposition, equally important to our adopted citizens and to the commercial interests of this country, has been favorably entertained and agreed to by all the governments from whom replies have been received.

I ask the attention of Congress to the suggestions of the Postmaster-General in his report respecting the further legislation required, in his opinion, for the benefit of the postal service.

The Secretary of the Interior reports as follows in regard to the public lands:  The public lands have ceased to be a source of revenue.  From the 1st July, 1861, to the 30th September, 1862, the entire cash receipts from the sale of lands were $137,476.26—­a sum much less than the expenses of our land system during the same period.  The homestead law, which will take effect on the 1st of January next, offers such inducements to settlers that sales for cash can not be expected to an extent sufficient to meet the expenses of the General Land Office and the cost of surveying and bringing the land into market.

The discrepancy between the sum here stated as arising from the sales of the public lands and the sum derived from the same source as reported from the Treasury Department arises, as I understand, from the fact that the periods of time, though apparently, were not really coincident at the beginning point, the Treasury report including a considerable sum now which had previously been reported from the Interior, sufficiently large to greatly overreach the sum derived from the three months now reported upon by the Interior and not by the Treasury.  The Indian tribes upon our frontiers have during the past year manifested a spirit of insubordination, and at several points have engaged in open hostilities against the white settlements in their vicinity.  The tribes occupying the Indian country south of Kansas renounced their allegiance to the United States and entered into treaties with the insurgents.  Those who remained loyal to the United States were driven from the country.  The chief of the Cherokees has visited this city for the purpose of restoring the former relations of the tribe with the United States.  He alleges that they were constrained by superior force to enter into treaties with the insurgents, and that the United States neglected to furnish the protection which their treaty stipulations required.