Background:
Lake George, nicknamed the Queen of American Lakes is a long, narrow oligotrophic lake located at the southeast base of the Adirondack Mountains, in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York. It lies within the upper region of the Great Appalachian Valley and drains all the way northward into Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River drainage basin. The lake is situated along the historical natural (Amerindian) path between the valleys of the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers, and so lies on the direct land route between Albany, New York and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The lake extends about 32.2 mi on a north-south axis, is quite deep, and varies from one to three miles in width, presenting a significant barrier to east-west travel. Although the year-round population of the Lake George region is relatively small, the summertime population can swell to over 50,000 residents, many in the village of Lake George region at the southern end of the lake.
The lake was originally named the Andia-ta-roc-te by local Native Americans. James Fenimore Cooper in his narrative Last of the Mohicans called it the Horican, after a tribe which may have lived there, because he felt the original name was too hard to pronounce.
The first European visitor to the area, Samuel de Champlain, noted the lake in his journal on July 3, 1609, but did not name it. In 1646, the French Canadian Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, the first European to view the lake, named it Lac du Saint-Sacrement (Lake of the Holy Sacrament), and its exit stream, La Chute (The Fall).
On August 28, 1755, William Johnson led British colonial forces to occupy the area in the French and Indian War. He renamed the lake as Lake George for King George II. On September 8, 1755 the Battle of Lake George was fought between the forces of Britain and France resulting in a strategic victory for the British and their Iroquois allies. After the battle, Johnson ordered the construction of a military fortification at the southern end of the lake. The fort was named Fort William Henry after the King\\\'s grandson Prince William Henry, a younger brother of the later King George III.
In September, the French responded by beginning construction of Fort Carillon, later called Fort Ticonderoga, on a point where La Chute enters Lake Champlain. These fortifications controlled the easy water route between Canada and colonial New York. A French army, and their native allies under general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm laid siege to Fort William Henry in 1757 and burned it down after the British surrender. During the British retreat to Fort Edward they were ambushed and massacred by natives allied to the French, in what would become known as The Massacre at Fort William Henry.
On March 13, 1758, an attempted attack on that fort by irregular forces led by Robert Rogers was one of the most daring raids of that war. The unorthodox (to Europeans) tactics of Rogers\\\' Rangers are seen as the inspiring the later creation of similar forces in later conflicts—including the United States Army Rangers.
Lake George\\\'s key position on the Montreal–New York water route made possession of the forts at either end—particularly Ticonderoga—strategically crucial during the American Revolution.
Later in the war, British General John Burgoynes decision to bypass the easy water route to the Hudson River that Lake George offered and, instead, attempt to reach the Hudson though the marshes and forests at the southern end of Lake Champlain, led to the British defeat at Saratoga.
On May 31, 1791, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to his daughter, Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin... finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves... down to the water-edge: here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lake George was a common spot sought out by well-known artists, including Martin Johnson Heade, John F. Kensett, E. Charlton Fortune, Frank Vincent DuMond and Georgia O Keeffe.

Meyer, Herrmann Julius 1826 - 1909
Herrmann Julius Meyer and his father, Joseph Meyer (1796-1856) were German publishers of an illustrated travel series called Meyers Universum: Ein Jahrbuch fr Freunde der Natur und Kunst
After an apprenticeship as a bookseller, he returned to work in his fathers publishing house that was founded in Gotha in 1826 as a bibliographic institute.
Joseph Meyer had admired the people and institutions of America and sent his son to establish a printing house in New York. In 1852 Herrmann published an American edition of the Universum Views Of The Most Remarkable Places And Objects Of All Countries which was published by the North American Bibliographic Institution (New York: H.J. Meyer; first volume, 1852; second volume 1853.) using prints from Germany.
In 1855 Meyer published The United States Illustrated; in Views of City and Country, with Descriptive and Historical Articles enlisting the services of Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Tribune, to be editor of the series. Unfortunately, the series did not do well as most titles were a mix of German and English, making them scarce to find today of excellent views of early America.
Herrmann Meyer had six sons, among them: Hans (Africa researcher and first ascendant of Kilimanjaro, 1858-1929), Arndt (1859-1920), Carl (1861-1908) and Hermann (1871-1932, also explorer in Africa).
In 1884 Herrmann Meyer withdrew from the publishing house and handed it over to his eldest sons Arndt and Hans.

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