Washington as a Camp/Camp Cameron
- Camp Cameron.
As we had the first choice, we got, on the whole, the best site for a camp. We occupy the villa and farm of Dr. Stone, two miles due north of Willard’s Hotel. I assume that hotel as a peculiarly American point of departure, and also because it is the hub of Washington, — the centre of an eccentric, having the White House at the end of its shorter, and the Capitol at the end of its longer radius, — moral, so they say, as well as geometrical.
Sundry dignitaries, Presidents and what not, have lived here in times gone by. Whoever chose the site ought to be kindly remembered for his good taste. The house stands upon the pretty terrace commanding the plain of Washington. From the upper windows we can see the Potomac opening southward like a lake, and between us and the water ambitious Washington stretching itself along and along, like the shackly files of an army of recruits.
Oaks love the soil of this terrace. There are some noble ones on the undulations before the house. It may be permitted even for one who is supposed to think of nothing but powder and ball to notice one of these grand trees. Let the ivy-covered stem of the Big Oak of Camp Cameron take its place in literature! And now enough of scenery. The landscape will stay, but the troops will not. There are trees and slopes of greensward elsewhere, and shrubbery begins to blossom in these bright days of May before a thousand pretty homes. The tents and the tent-life are more interesting for the moment than objects which cannot decamp.
The old villa serves us for head-quarters. It is a respectable place, not without its pretensions. Four granite pillars, as true grit as if the two Presidents Adams had lugged them on their shoulders all the way from Quincy, Mass., make a carriage-porch. Here is the Colonel in the big west parlor, the Quartermaster and Commissary in the rooms with sliding-doors on the east, the Hospital upstairs, and so on. Other rooms, numerous as the cells in a monastery, serve as quarters for the Engineer Company. These dens are not monastic in aspect. The house is, of course, a Certosa, so far as the gentler sex are concerned; but no anchorites dwell here at present. If the Seventh disdained everything but soldiers’ fare, — which it does not, — common civility would require that it should do violence to its disinclination for comfort and luxury, and consume the stores sent down by ardent patriots in New York. The cellars of the villa overflow with edibles, and in the greenhouse is a most appetizing array of barrels, boxes, cans, and bottles, shipped here that our Sybarites might not sigh for the flesh-pots of home. Such trash may do very well to amuse the palate in these times of half peace, half hostility; but when
- “war, which for a space does fail,
- Shall doubly thundering swell the gale,”
then every soldier should drop gracefully to the simple ration, and cease to dabble with frying-pans. Cooks to their aprons, and soldiers to their guns!
Our tents are pitched on a level clover-field sloping to the front for our parade-ground. We use the old wall tent without a fly. It is necessary to live in one of these awhile, to know the vast superiority of the Sibley pattern. Sibley’s tent is a wrinkle taken from savage life. It is the Sioux buffalo-skin lodge, or Tepee, improved, — a cone truncated at the top and fitted with a movable apex for ventilation. A single tent-pole, supported upon a hinged tripod of iron, sustains the structure. It is compacter, more commodious, healthier, and handsomer than the ancient models. None other should be used in permanent encampments. For marching troops, the French Tente d’abri is a capital shelter.
Still our fellows manage to be at home as they are. Some of our model tents are types of the best style of temporary cottages. Young house-keepers of limited incomes would do well to visit and take heed. A whole elysium of household comfort can be had out of a teapot, — tin; a brace of cups, — tin; a brace of plates, — tin; and a frying-pan.
In these days of war everybody can see a camp. Every one who stays at home has a brother or a son or a lover quartered in one of the myriad tents that have blossomed with the daffodil-season all over our green fields of the North. I need not, then, describe our encampment in detail, — its guard-tent in advance, — its guns in battery, — its flag-staff, — its companies quartered in streets with droll and fanciful names, — its officers’ tents in the rear, at right angles to the lines of company tents, — its kitchens, armed with Captain Vielé’s capital army cooking-stoves, — its big marquees, “The White House” and “Fort Pickens,” for the lodging and messing of the new artillery company, — its barbers’ shops, — its offices. The same, more or less well arranged, can be seen in all the rendezvous where the armies are now assembling. Instead of such description, then, let me give the log of a single day at our camp.