Meanwhile, Major-General James Abercrombie of Glassa, a gallant Scottish officer, with the 1st Scots Royals, the Black Watch, the 55th, or Westmoreland Regiment, the 62nd, or Royal North Americans, and other troops, to the number of seven thousand regulars and ten thousand provincials, landed from nine hundred batteaux, and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats, with all their cannon, provisions, and ammunition, on the 6th of July, at the foot of Lake George, a clear and beautiful sheet of water thirty-three miles long, and surrounded by high and verdant mountains. That district, now so busy and populous, was then silent and savage. No sound broke the stillness of the romantic scenery, or the depths of the American forest, but the British drum or Scottish pipe, as the troops formed in four columns of attack, and advanced against the Fort of Ticonderoga. Our regiment, then styled "Lord John Murray's Highlanders," was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Grant; his second was Major Duncan Campbell of Inveraw, and never did two better or braver officers wear the tartan of the old 42nd. Viscount Howe, a brilliant officer of the old school of puffs, pigtails, knee-breeches, and Ramilie wigs, led the 55th. Ticonderoga is situated on a tongue of land extending between Lake George and the narrow fall of water that pours with the roar of thunder into Lake Champlain, a hundred feet below. Its ramparts were thirty feet high, faced with stone, surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by a dangerous morass that was swept by the range of its cannon and mortars. The approach to this morass--the _only avenue_ to the fort--was covered by a dense abattis of felled trees of enormous size, secured by stakes to the ground, and having all their branches pointed outward. The garrison, which consisted of eight battalions, was five thousand six hundred strong; and as the assailants advanced, it was the good fortune of our hero, Adam White, to learn from an Indian scout that three thousand French, from the banks of the Mohawk river, were advancing to reinforce Ticonderoga. These tidings he at once communicated to General Abercrombie, and orders were given to push on without delay. The praise he obtained for his diligence made the breast of our poor "sub" expand with hope; and with a last glance at his relic of Lucy Fleming, he shouldered his spontoon, and hurried with his company into the matted jungle. The officer who commanded in Ticonderoga was brave, resolute, and determined. Twenty-four years before he had been a grenadier of the Regiment de Normandie, and served with the army of the Rhine under the famous Maréchal the Duke of Berwick. At the siege of Philipsburg in 1734, the Prince of Conti was so pleased by his intrepid bearing, that he placed a purse in hu hand, apologizing for the smallness of the sum it contained; "but we soldiers, mon camarade," continued the prince, "have the privilege to plead that we are poor."