The Confederate infantry, pushing forward through the undergrowth, made but tardy progress; the cavalry patrols found that every road and bridle-path was strongly held, and it was difficult in the extreme to discover Hooker’s exact position.  Jackson himself, riding to the front to reconnoitre, nearly fell a victim to the recklessness he almost invariably displayed when in quest of information.  The cavalry had been checked at Catherine Furnace, and were waiting the approach of the infantry.  Wright’s brigade was close at hand, and swinging round northwards, drove back the enemy’s skirmishers, until, in its turn, it was brought up by the fire of artillery.  Just at this moment Jackson galloped up, and begged Stuart to ride forward with him in order to find a point from which the enemy’s guns might be enfiladed.  A bridle-path, branching off from the main road to the right, led to a hillock about half a mile distant, and the two generals, accompanied by their staffs, and followed by a battery of horse-artillery, made for this point of vantage.  “On reaching the spot,” says Stuart’s adjutant-general, “so dense was the undergrowth, it was found impossible to find enough clear space to bring more than one gun at a time into position; the others closed up immediately behind, and the whole body of us completely blocked up the narrow road.  Scarcely had the smoke of our first shot cleared away, when a couple of masked batteries suddenly opened on us at short range, and enveloped us in a storm of shell and canister, which, concentrated on so narrow a space, did fearful execution among our party, men and horses falling right and left, the animals kicking and plunging wildly, and everybody eager to disentangle himself from the confusion, and get out of harm’s way.  Jackson, as soon as he found out his mistake, ordered the guns to retire; but the confined space so protracted the operation of turning, that the enemy’s cannon had full time to continue their havoc, covering the road with dead and wounded.  That Jackson and Stuart with their staff officers escaped was nothing short of miraculous."* (* Memoirs of the Confederate War.  Heros von Boreke.)

Other attempts at reconnaissance were more successful.  Before nightfall it was ascertained that Hooker was in strong force on the Chancellorsville ridge, along the plank road, and on a bare plateau to the southward called Hazel Grove.  “Here,” in the words of General Lee, “he had assumed a position of great natural strength, surrounded on all sides by a dense forest, filled with a tangled undergrowth, in the midst of which breastworks of logs had been constructed, with trees felled in front, so as to form an almost impenetrable abattis.  His artillery swept the few narrow roads, by which the position could be approached from the front, and commanded the adjacent woods.  The left of his line extended from Chancellorsville towards the Rappahannock, covering the Bark Mill (United States) Ford, which communicated with the north bank of the river by a pontoon bridge.  His right stretched westward along the Germanna Ford road (the pike) more than two miles.  As the nature of the country rendered it hazardous to attack by night, our troops were halted and formed in line of battle in front of Chancellorsville at right angles to the plank road, extending on the right to the Mine road, and to the left in the direction of the Catherine Furnace.”