e. A
fertile district, too, for the surface is covered with a thin coating of
loam, in which sugar-beets and cereals vie with one another in profusion
of growth.

[Sidenote: Valleys of the Vesle and the Aisne.]

[Sidenote: Fertile slopes and valleys.]

However, the plateau is intersected by occasional valleys, generally
broad and deep. The two most considerable are those of the Vesle and the
Aisne which come together above Soissons, at Conde, and isolate the
famous Chemin-des-Dames to the north. Two tributaries, Ambleny brook and
the Crise, flowing down to the Aisne, subdivide the southern portion of
the Soissonnais, where the battle was fought. With respect to the
plateau, these valleys are little worlds apart. Below the hard
limestone, they have hollowed out a path through very soft rocks, sands,
and clays; in these the streams have inevitably made large inroads,
sapping the limestone cliffs which overhang them. Thus the valley
bottoms are abnormally wide--from two to three kilometres near Soissons.
The presence of the clayey soils makes them very moist, and we find
there fields of beets and grain side by side with extensive tracts of
grassland. On the lower slopes are many small fields given over to the
less hardy products--beans, orchards, and sometimes grape-vines. Here
are most of the villages, at the level where the water-courses, seeping
through the limestone of the plateau, reappear in the shape of springs,
on the impervious stratum. For the most part the villages lie along the
hillsides, surrounded by trees, embellished by chateaux and parks. They
are well-built and attractive, boasting churches of graceful
architecture, thanks to the lovely decorative stone taken from the
quarries in the limestone cliffs above, which are called _boves_, or
_croutes_. A fascinating, fertile country, diversified and pleasant to
the eye, before the war it might well have been taken as a sample of
rural opulence.

[Sidenote: Great difficulties of passage.]

Plateau and valleys, then, differ materially--the one monotonous and
easy of access; the other, no less charming than varied, but presenting
great difficulties of passage in the face of opposition. There is not a
village on the plateau: only a few large farms and scattered sugar-beet
refineries. In the valleys and on the slopes there are everywhere
houses, chateaux, parks, orchards, and grottoes. The slender
church-tower barely rises to the level of the plateau, as if to