[Sidenote: The first great American battle.]
A deep, broad, swampy valley, traversed by an unfordable stream;
surmounted by steep slopes bristling with vineyards, orchards, villages,
and diversified by quarries; above, an entanglement of low hills,
ravines, and valleys, under a mantle of forest--such was the theatre of
operations in which the Americans won their first great victory. A more
difficult terrain could not be desired, or one better adapted to test
the valor of the victorious troops.
But when they had made themselves masters of this battlefield, the
Allies were by no means at the end of their labors; and the difficulties
of the ground to be traversed were still serious in the central portion
of the theatre of operations--the Orxois.
[Sidenote: The Orxois plateau--its soil and relief.]
[Sidenote: A varied landscape.]
The Orxois is a plateau extending north of the Marne to the Soissonnais,
at a mean height of 160 metres. But it is very far from being uniform.
Let us study the nature of its soil, and the relief, that we may
comprehend its aspects more thoroughly. The substratum of the plateau of
the Orxois is the layer of rock called "hard limestone" 30 to 40 metres
in thickness, so much of which is used for building material in the
towns and villages. This layer is almost horizontal, and if there were
nothing superimposed upon it, the plateau would be a practically level
platform. But above the hard limestone are successive layers of a far
different character--layers of sand, of Beauchamp sandstone, mingled
with marl, making a moist, impermeable, infertile soil; then another
layer of limestone, softer and more clayey than that below.
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