Here stood a large house, with the usual pillared porticoes, built long since by the Chancellor family and inhabited by them in their generation, but now turned into a country inn.

Yet it had importance.

Roads ran from it in various directions and in territories very unlike, including the strange and weird region known as the Wilderness.
Hooker had come through the Wilderness with his main force, and was now forming a line of battle in front of it in the open country, when for some reason never fully known he fell back on Chancellorsville and began to concentrate his army in the edge of the Wilderness.
Harry, riding with Dalton and some others to inspect the enemy's front through their glasses, saw this gloomy forest, destined to such a terrible fame not alone from the coming battle, but from others as great.

Nature could have chosen no more fitting spot for the mighty sacrifice to save the Union, because here everything is dark, solemn and desolate.
For twenty miles one way and fifteen the other the Wilderness stretched its somber expanse.

The ancient forest had been cut away long since and the thin, light soil had produced a sea of scrub and thickets in its place, in which most of the houses were the huts of charcoal burners.
The undergrowth and jungle were often impenetrable, save by some lone hunter or wild animal.