On this very same day of July, 1609, while Champlain’s arquebus was frightening the solitudes of this leafy part of the wild New World, a little vessel known as the _Half Moon_ was in anchor on the New England coast while the carpenter fitted a new foremast. A few Weeks later the _Half Moon_ was in the Hudson and had come to anchor above present Troy in the precincts over which the warriors of the Long House kept watch. Thus does the Muse of History play different parts with two hands. Time passed and French and Indian war parties again and again went by the point of land on which Ticonderoga now stands, bent on marauding and harrying the English villages. Lake Champlain and Lake George had become part of the great highway between French world and English world. Finally, in 1735, Crown Point, the fore-runner of Ticonderoga, was established by the French as an organized centre of power and an outpost thrown toward the English. Twenty years after this Ticonderoga came into prominence. The year 1755 was a doleful one for the English colonies. It was the year of Braddock’s defeat. In January, Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, proposed an attack on Crown Point. The other colonies were taken with the idea and raised levies of men and funds. A heterogeneous army was the result under the leadership of William Johnson, of New York, with the rank of Major-general, separately bestowed upon him by each of the colonies taking part. His selection was due not only to his immense personal popularity but to his influence in the Long House of the Five Nations as well, no other white man of his time having so much authority with the dwellers in the forest. Of white men he had altogether about eight thousand and he had his Indian allies. That in an army which included men from Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire there should be some bickering and disagreements was inevitable, but, at length, the column reached the foot of Lake George, which had become known to its French acquaintances as Lac le Sacrement. Now it received a new baptism. “I have given it the name of Lake George,” wrote Johnson to the Lords of Trade, “not only in honor of His Majesty but to ascertain (assert) his undoubted dominion here.” Lake George it has been ever since. A camp was made where, after a time, Fort William Henry was built, and a most unmilitary camp it was, if we can believe the accounts of contemporaries. Though a dense forest gave cover for an enemy to its very borders, no effort was made to clear away the trees. Painted Indians lounged around, traders squabbled together, and New England clergymen preached to the savages long Calvinistic sermons.