its river glimmering in the distance, its patches of corn and
tobacco, its scattered and unthrifty farm-houses flanked with their
negro quarters, and its long lines of white and sun-baked roads.

At that point on the direct road from Charles City to Richmond, and
about four miles from Malvern Hill in a North-west direction, such a
scene was presented, half an hour after sunrise, as has seldom been
looked upon by mortal eye. The increasing light brought more and more
plainly to view the retreating march of the Union forces--unmistakably
a retreat and yet quite as unmistakably no panic. Interminable lines of
wagons, whose length and number no one can estimate who has not seen a
formidable army on the march, rolled on slowly over the white roads,
raising clouds of impalpable dust that rose no higher than the wheels
and then settled again without obscuring the view. Battery after battery
of rifled Parrots, smooth-bores, howitzers and monster siege-guns,
rumbled leisurely along the uneven way. Long lines of jaded cavalry
tramped wearily and stiffly, the horses with drooping heads and the
riders with listless attitudes and loose seats in their saddles which
denoted the very extremity of fatigue and exhaustion. Streams of
limping, footsore stragglers and slightly-wounded soldiers flanked the
roads on either side, trudging along beside the ambulances in which
their worse-wounded companions were being carried forward. Mixed in with
these were unshorn Confederate prisoners; teamsters whose mules and
wagons lay at various points between the Chickahominy and Turkey Bend;
and ruined sutlers whose precious captured stores were now giving aid
and comfort to the appreciative stomachs of the hungry rebels. The
Provost-Marshal's Guard and fatigue-party of Colonel Porter brought up
the rear--picking up stragglers; blowing up ammunition that had been
left by the way; burning feed and forage; smashing barrels of liquids,
of which the apparent wanton waste on the ground would at any other time
have almost produced a revolt in the ranks; bending the barrels and
throwing into the swamp, of muskets dropped by dead and exhausted
soldiers; breaking up and burning abandoned wagons, and destroying
knapsacks, blankets, and all such other articles that could be of any
possible use to an enemy, as had been left behind by the regiments that
had passed on to the James River.

The position at which our point of view is taken, and through which
these st