midnight
A Revolutionary officer , skilled in estimating large encampments , declared that the crowd numbered between twenty-five and thirty thousand people . Enthusiasm gathered intensity with each succeeding hour . There was no fixed time for intermission . Each family cooked , ate , slept at any time its members chose , and returned to the services , which began at sunrise and continued until long after midnight . Sometimes several preachers were each exhorting a large audience in different parts of the ground at the same time , while singing , shouting , praying and groaning were the constant accompaniment of the fervid , chantlike exhortations . At night the vast encampment , illuminated by scores of bear-grease lamps , hundreds of rush-lights , and thousands of tallow dips , presented a spectacle of weird sublimity . In the improvised auditorium lights suspended from overhanging boughs fell upon a concourse of earnest worshipers whose voices , rising in the solemn melody of a hymn , mingled with the fervid petitions of the preacher , the shouts of the newly converted , the sobs and shrieks of the newly convicted .