about four
o'clock
For this purpose , it will be well to look in at the encampment , with the eyes of some persons from the city who visited it on Sunday the 29th of June -- the very day on which McClellan , from sheer lack of troops , abandoned the White House , necessarily destroying so much valuable property , losing for the time the last hope of the capture of Richmond , and falling back on the line of the James River . The Two Hundredth Regiment lay at `` Camp Lyon , '' -LRB- as it may be designated for the purposes of this chronicle -RRB- -- a locality on Long Island , a few miles eastward from the City Hall of Brooklyn , and easily accessible by one of the lines of horse-cars running from Fulton Ferry . It had been some two months established ; recruiting for the regiment was said to be going on very rapidly ; `` only a few more men wanted '' was the burden of the song sung in the advertising columns of the morning papers ; rations for some seven hundred men were continually furnished for it , by the Quartermaster 's Department ; the Colonel made flattering reports of it every day or two , to the higher military authorities in the city , and at least once a week to the still higher authorities at Albany ; and a political Brigadier-General was reported to have gone down and reviewed it , once or twice , coming back eminently satisfied with its numbers , discipline and performances . The visitors from the city , who , having no other connection whatever with the progress of this story , may be fobbed off with the very ordinary names of Smith and Brown , -- reached the camp at about four o'clock on that Sunday afternoon , having waited until that late hour in the day for the purpose of avoiding the noon-tide heat , and being anxious to be present at the evening drill , which was supposed to take place in the neighborhood of six o'clock . An acquaintance of theirs , an officer in the Two Hundredth , one Lieutenant Woodruff , had several times invited them to `` run down to camp and see him before he went away , '' promising to do the honors of the encampment in the best manner compatible with the duties of a `` fellow busy all the time , you know . '' Alighting from the vehicle , Smith and Brown found the camp stretching before them , scarcely so picturesque as they had anticipated , but with enough of the military air about its green sod and conical tents , to make it rather varied and pleasing to a couple of `` cits '' who had not looked upon the extended army pageant around Washington , or seen anything more of war than could be observed in a turn-out of the First Division on the Fourth of July . On a broad level , stretching back for a quarter of a mile from the railroad-track , and terminating in a strip of noble oak woods , the tents of the encampment were pitched , forty or fifty in number , not too white and cleanly-looking , even at a distance , and decidedly dingy and yellow when brought to a nearer view .