ich arable
extends to the foothills of the Alleghanies, dotted with woods and
homesteads, and here, in the Valley of the North Fork, is freer air
and more space for movement.

The separation of the two valleys is accentuated by the fact that
save at one point only the Massanuttons are practically impassable.
From New Market, in the western valley, a good road climbs the
heights, and crossing the lofty plateau, sinks sharply down to Luray,
the principal village on the South Fork. Elsewhere precipitous
gullies and sheer rock faces forbid all access to the mountain, and a
few hunters' paths alone wind tediously through the woods up the
steep hillside. Nor are signal stations to be found on the wide area
of unbroken forest which clothes the summit. Except from the peaks at
either end, or from one or two points on the New Market-Luray road,
the view is intercepted by the sea of foliage and the rolling spurs.

Striking eastward from Luray, two good roads cross the Blue Ridge;
one running to Culpeper Court House, through Thornton's Gap; the
other through Fisher's Gap to Gordonsville.

It was the Massanuttons that weighed on the mind of Banks. The Valley
of the South Fork gave the Confederates a covered approach against
his line of communications. Issuing from that strait cleft between
the mountains Ashby's squadrons might at any time sweep down upon his
trains of waggons, his hospitals, and his magazines; and should
Jackson be reinforced, Ashby might be supported by infantry and guns,
and both Strasburg and Winchester be endangered. It was not within
Banks' power to watch the defile. "His cavalry," he reported, "was
weak in numbers and spirit, much exhausted with night and day work."
Good cavalry, he declared, would help incalculably, and he admitted
that in this arm he was greatly inferior to the enemy.

Nor was he more happy as to the Alleghanies on his right. Fremont was
meditating an advance on Lewisburg, Staunton, and the Virginia and
Tennessee Railway with 25,000 men.* (* See ante.) One column was to
start from Gauley Bridge, in the Kanawha Valley; the other from the
South Branch of the Potomac. Milroy's brigade, from Cheat Mountain,
had therefore occupied Monterey, and Schenck's brigade had marched
from Romney to Moorefield. But Moorefield was thirty miles west of
Woodstock, and between them rose a succession of rugged ridges,
within whose deep valleys the Confederate horsemen might find paths
by which to reach to