The following extract is from it letter written by an officer on board the United States steamer Richmond, after the bombardment of Fort Pickens :

I went by invitation of Lieut.—— ,of the Engineers, to visit the fort. We took a circuit first of the covered way, then of the parapet and ramparts. All around the Fort, inside and out, were marks of the enemy’s shot and shell. On the glacis, here and there, were deep groves, ending in a large hole, where the shot had plumped into it, and where there bad been shell which had burst. The hole was a great excavation into which you could have driven an ox cart. Where the projectiles have struck the standing walls they have chipped off patches of the brickwork, (it is a brick and not a stone fort) perhaps eight or ten inches deep, and where they have struck the corners large portions have been removed but in no case has any part of the fortification received an injury tending in the least to weaken it, and this after two days’ heavy firing.