Another advantage possessed in a preeminent degree by the Northern armies, was that—their soldiers having been drawn from all classes and trades—if a corps for wheelwrights’, millwrights’, harness-makers’, or almost for any other kind of work required on the field, was suddenly wanted, it was always to be had ready-made at a moment’s notice. On passing over these battle-fields one quickly understands why in the late war cavalry was so little used for improving a victory, and why also the attacking army generally appeared to have so great an advantage. In this part of Virginia—and I found it to be so everywhere throughout the South—the clearings are small and few, and far between, all the rest of the country being covered with forest, or with abandoned clearings returning to forest. In such a country cavalry could not have acted, even if, which was seldom the case, the victorious army had had more than was required for outpost duty and other work of the kind. And there being cover everywhere, an advancing force, in coming up for an attack on the enemy, could everywhere find concealment and shelter. [Sidenote: _How Slavery Modified the Landscape._] As soon as you enter Virginia you see unmistakable evidences of the recent existence of slavery. The country is not cleared, cultivated, and inhabited in the marvellous manner which so much surprises and pleases one in the North, where each man holds a plot of about a hundred acres, more or less, with his neat homestead planted in the middle of it. Here only a very small proportion of the land is under cultivation: far the greater part has, on the wasteful Southern system (where men owned large estates of several thousand acres, many times as much as they could keep in hand), been worked out, and then abandoned and allowed to return to wood. A respectable house is hardly ever seen along this line of railway. One gets tired of the monotony of the forest, and of the ever-recurring reflection how differently things would have looked, if this glorious State, blessed so highly in its soil and climate, had not been cursed with the blight of slavery.