, and the provincials on the flanks. Each
corps had its flags and its music. The day was fair and men and officers
were in the highest spirits.

[Footnote 614: _Letter from Lake George_, in _Boston News Letter_.]

Before ten o'clock they began to enter the Narrows; and the boats of the
three divisions extended themselves into long files as the mountains
closed on either hand upon the contracted lake. From front to rear the
line was six miles long. The spectacle was superb: the brightness of the
summer day; the romantic beauty of the scenery; the sheen and sparkle of
those crystal waters; the countless islets, tufted with pine, birch, and
fir; the bordering mountains, with their green summits and sunny crags;
the flash of oars and glitter of weapons; the banners, the varied
uniforms, and the notes of bugle, trumpet, bagpipe, and drum, answered
and prolonged by a hundred woodland echoes. "I never beheld so
delightful a prospect," wrote a wounded officer at Albany a fortnight
after.

Rogers with the rangers, and Gage with the light infantry, led the way
in whaleboats, followed by Bradstreet with his corps of boatmen, armed
and drilled as soldiers. Then came the main body. The central column of
regulars was commanded by Lord Howe, his own regiment, the fifty-fifth,
in the van, followed by the Royal Americans, the twenty-seventh,
forty-fourth, forty-sixth, and eightieth infantry, and the Highlanders
of the forty-second, with their major, Duncan Campbell of Inverawe,
silent and gloomy amid the general cheer, for his soul was dark with
foreshadowings of death.[615] With this central column came what are
described as two floating castles, which were no doubt batteries to
cover the landing of the troops. On the right hand and the left were the
provincials, uniformed in blue, regiment after regiment, from
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
Behind them all came the bateaux, loaded with stores and baggage, and
the heavy flatboats that carried the artillery, while a rear-guard of
provincials and regulars closed the long procession.[616]

[Footnote 615: See Appendix G.]

[Footnote 616: _Letter from Lake George_, in _Boston News Letter_. Even
Rogers, the ranger, speaks of the beauty of the scene.]

At five in the afternoon they reached Sabbath-Day Point, twenty-five
miles down the lake, where they stopped till late in the evening,
waiting for the baggage and artillery, which had lagged behind; an