It was in 1774 that a new plan was formed for escaping from the government of New York; a plan that startles us by its audacity and its comprehensiveness. This was to establish a new royal colony extending from the Connecticut to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, from forty-five degrees of north latitude to Massachusetts and the Mohawk River. The plan was formed by Allen and other Vermonters. At that time Colonel Philip Skene, a retired British officer, was living at Whitehall on a large patent of land. To him the Vermonters communicated the project. Whitehall was to be the capital and Skene the governor of the projected colony. Skene, at his own expense, went to London, and was appointed governor of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but the course of public events prevented the completion of this scheme. CHAPTER VI. PREPARATIONS TO CAPTURE TICONDEROGA.--DIARY OF EDWARD MOTT.--EXPEDITIONS PLANNED.--BENEDICT ARNOLD.--GERSHOM BEACH. On March 29, 1775, John Brown, a Massachusetts lawyer, wrote from Montreal to Boston: The people on the New Hampshire Grants have engaged to seize the fort at Ticonderoga as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed by the king's troops. The most minute account of the preparations to capture Ticonderoga is furnished by the diary for April, 1775, of Edward Mott, of Preston, Conn., a captain in Colonel S. H. Parson's regiment. He had been at the camp of the American army beleaguering Boston; took charge of the expedition to seize Ticonderoga; reported its success to Governor Trumbull at Hartford; was sent by Trumbull to Congress at Philadelphia with the news; resumed the command of his company at Ticonderoga in May; was with the Northern army during the campaign; was at the taking of Chambly and St. Johns; and became a major in Colonel Gray's regiment next year. PRESTON, Friday, April 28, 1775.