The region is a nearly unbroken expanse of dense thicket pierced only by narrow and winding roads, over which the traveller rides, mile after mile, without seeing a single human habitation.  It would seem, indeed, that the whole barren and melancholy tract had been given up to the owl, the whippoorwill, and the moccasin, its original tenants.  The plaintive cries of the night-birds alone break the gloomy silence of the desolate region, and the shadowy thicket stretching in every direction produces a depressing effect upon the feelings.  Chancellorsville is in the centre of this singular territory, on the main road, or rather roads, running from Orange Court-House to Fredericksburg, from which latter place it is distant about ten miles.  In spite of its imposing name, Chancellorsville was simply a large country-house, originally inhabited by a private family, but afterward used as a roadside inn.  A little to the westward the “Old Turnpike” and Orange Plank-road unite as they approach the spot, where they again divide, to unite a second time a few miles to the east, where they form the main highway to Fredericksburg.  From the north come in roads from United States and Ely’s Fords; Germanna Ford is northwest; from the south runs the “Brock Road” in the direction of the Rapidan, passing a mile or two west of the place.

The whole country, the roads, the chance houses, the silence, the unending thicket, in this dreary wilderness, produce a sombre effect.  A writer, familiar with it, says:  “There all is wild, desolate, and lugubrious.  Thicket, undergrowth, and jungle, stretch for miles, impenetrable and untouched.  Narrow roads wind on forever between melancholy masses of stunted and gnarled oak.  Little sunlight shines there.  The face of Nature is dreary and sad.  It was so before the battle; it is not more cheerful to-day, when, as you ride along, you see fragments of shell, rotting knapsacks, rusty gun-barrels, bleached bones, and grinning skulls....  Into this jungle,” continues the same writer, “General Hooker penetrated.  It was the wolf in his den, ready to tear any one who approached.  A battle there seemed impossible.  Neither side could see its antagonist.  Artillery could not move; cavalry could not operate; the very infantry had to flatten their bodies to glide between the stunted trees.  That an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men should have chosen that spot to fight forty thousand, and not only chosen it, but made it a hundred times more impenetrable by felling trees, erecting breastworks, disposing artillery en masse to sweep every road and bridle-path which led to Chancellorsville—­this fact seemed incredible.”