Munro having heard that the French advanced guard, composed of regulars and Indians, had reached Ticonderoga, sent Colonel John Parker, with four hundred soldiers, down the lake in bay-boats to beat up their quarters; but three of his boat crews being captured, his design became known to M. Beauchatel, the officer in command. Parker was lured into an ambush, and the most dreadful scene of massacre and scalping ensued. His detachment was literally cut to pieces, only two officers and seventy privates escaping, of the four hundred who left the garrison of Munro. It was on a beautiful evening when MacGillivray's party of Highlanders, marching from the mountains that look down on Lake Champlain, came suddenly in view of Lake George. They had their muskets slung, and were encumbered by their knapsacks, havresacks, canteens, and blankets, and the live-long day had toiled to reach the fort ere night fell; for to halt in that woody district, teeming as it was with the savage Iroquois of Montcalm, would have been a measure fraught with danger and death. MacGillivray came in rear of his little band, leading by the bridle a stout pony, on the pad of which his wife was mounted, for she was ever the object of his tenderest solicitude. This pony was a sturdy little nag, but the long march from Albany had somewhat impaired its vigour, and now it was beginning to fail when almost at the end of the journey. With the detachment of MacGillivray were two of his comrades in the late civil war, Alaster MacGregor, from Glengyle, and Ewen Chisholm, one of the faithful men of Glenmorriston, who guarded the Prince in the Coire-gaoth. The sun was setting, and his gorgeous disc seemed for a time to linger among clouds of saffron, crimson, and purple, that were piled in glowing masses above the wooded hills, some of which were a thousand feet in height, and surrounded the waters and islets of Lake George--named by the Indians of old the Horican, and by the Pilgrim Fathers the Lake of the Sacrament; for, charmed by the limpid purity of the water and the sylvan beauty of the scenery, it had been selected, especially by the Jesuits, as a place for procuring the element of baptism. But now for the old Indian name had been substituted that of his Majesty George II.; while, to awe the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Tuscaroras, and to keep the French in check, Fort William Henry--named after another prince of the House of Brunswick--had been built, as related, upon the southern margin of the lake.