Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[229] in which we shall see more than one combat take place, and thence runs down to Washington; the James River, winding round the high mountains called Beaver Peaks, crosses Appomattox county, where Lee will capitulate, and after passing Richmond, falls into the Chesapeake, near Fortress Monroe. The Valley of Virginia, already frequently mentioned, an open and wellcultivated country, between two parallel chains of the Alleghanies, extends from the vicinity of the James to the banks of the Potomac. The eastern barrier of this valley, known by the name of the Blue Ridge, is intersected by deep defiles called gaps, situated at about equal distances from each other, and all traversed by good roads.

The country extending eastward, between the Blue Ridge and the Chesapeake, is undulating, covered with old forests or young pine trees, the only produce that a soil, exhausted by the cultivation of the tobacco-plant, is now able to bring forth; the population is thinly scattered; the soil, clayey and impermeable, is easily converted by the action of vehicles into mud, both soft and sticky, which was to be one of the most formidable enemies to the armies having to campaign in Virginia; a multitude of watercourses wind among the wooded ravines, between hillocks, the highest of which have been for the most part cleared; all these water-courses finally form two rivers, the Rappahannock and the York, which run in a parallel course towards the Potomac, and, like the latter, fall into Chesapeake Bay.

The nature of the ground, the absence of turnpikes, the small quantity of arable lands, and the very direction of the waters—everything, in short, renders an offensive campaign especially difficult in that country. There are very few railways. Two lines run from the shores of the Potomac to Richmond. One, starting from Acquia Creek, halfway between Washington and the mouth of the river, runs direct to the capital of Virginia, after crossing the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg. The other leaves Alexandria, opposite Washington, and running southwesterly reaches Gordonsville, where it forks. One branch, following the same direction along the foot of the Blue Ridge, connects with the great Tennessee line at Lynchburg by way of Charlottesville; the other branch, bending to the east and running