The day was oppressively hot, and the troops suffered greatly from thirst as they plodded along the forest aisles through the jungle-like region. The Wilderness was a maze of trees, underbrush, and ragged foliage. Low-limbed pines, scrub-oaks, hazels, and chinkapins interlaced their branches on the sides of rough country roads that lead through this labyrinth of desolation. The weary troops looked upon the heavy tangles of fallen timber and dense undergrowth with a sense of isolation. Only the sounds of the birds in the trees, the rustling of the leaves, and the passing of the army relieved the heavy pall of solitude that bore upon the senses of the Federal host. The forces of the Northern army advanced into the vast no-man's land by the roads leading from the fords. In the afternoon, Hancock was resting at Chancellorsville, while Warren posted his corps near the Wilderness Tavern, in which General Grant established his headquarters. Sedgwick's corps had followed in the track of Warren's veterans, but was ordered to halt near the river crossing, or a little south of it. The cavalry, as much as was not covering the rear wagon trains, was stationed near Chancellorsville and the Wilderness Tavern. That night the men from the North lay in bivouac with little fear of being attacked in this wilderness of waste, where military maneuvers would be very difficult. Two roads--the old Orange turnpike and the Orange plank road--enter the Wilderness from the southwest. Along these the Confederates moved from their entrenched position to oppose the advancing hosts of the North. Ewell took the old turnpike and Hill the plank road. Longstreet was hastening from Gordonsville. The troops of Longstreet, on the one side, and of Burnside, on the other, arrived on the field after exhausting forced marches. The locality in which the Federal army found itself on the 5th of May was not one that any commander would choose for a battle-ground. Lee was more familiar with its terrible features than was his opponent, but this gave him little or no advantage. Grant, having decided to move by the Confederate right flank, could only hope to pass through the desolate region and reach more open country before the inevitable clash would come. But this was not to be. General Humphreys, who was Meade's chief of staff, says in his "Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865": "So far as I know, no great battle ever took place before on such ground. But little of the combatants could be seen, and its progress was known to the senses chiefly by the rising and falling sounds of a vast musketry fire that continually swept along the lines of battle, many miles in length, sounds which at times approached to the sublime."