The discovery of the bay of San Francisco, reported at the same time, was ignored as a trivial and miscellaneous item.

The celebration in honor of Junípero's discovery gave new impetus to his plans of Christian conquest, and Monterey was declared the capital of the colonial empire.

For a time it appeared that nothing more would be needed to stimulate Spain to hold the western coast of America against the world. But Castilian enthusiasm was short-lived. The mystery of Monterey having been cleared away and the event deliriously lauded, Spain lapsed into an indefinite programme concerning the Californian coast. Both Madrid and Mexico all but forgot Monterey and the activities of wandering friars who, radiating thence, were unconsciously preparing the way for a national destiny as glorious as Spain's, even at the height of her circumstance and pomp.

Now came the critical moment in Junípero's career, a moment that was to decide the fate of the western half of the New World. Antonio Bucareli had been installed as Viceroy of Mexico. A keen man of conventional wisdom, it seemed to him to be a waste of public money to divert a stream of gold to maintain the far-away civilizing dreams of mendicants centred at Carmel. He would close the harbor of San Blas, then maintained to equip expeditions to the Californian settlements, and abandon the fruitless undertaking of trying to populate bleak promontories swept by winds that brought home no rich argosies. The enterprise of his subjects should be devoted to more lucrative pursuits.

Here was need and opportunity for a supreme test of the resources that had made the founder of Monterey the heroic figure of the West. He saw, as did no other Spaniard of his day, the splendid future awaiting the Pacific coast. There was no time to halt between two opinions. Already Captain Behring had explored northwestern waters in the name of Russia, and now the fur traders of that empire, establishing their commercial posts at Unalaska, were prepared to claim the coast as far south as sea-otters run. Captain Cook and Vancouver were about to sail to try to nail the Union Jack on every headland from Sitka to San Diego. Disguised under the standard of Portugal, privateersmen of various nations were hoisting full sail in the race for western conquest, and Louis XVI. was planning to equip François de Gallup, Count de la Pérouse, to transplant the eagles of France to California crags. The end of the Seven Years' War, a decade before Bucareli's remarkable decision, had led to a recarving of America among European powers, and jealousy and world-wide ambition now steered the sea in search of new empire.

All this was not then apparent on the surface, but the cowled monk in his Mission at Carmel divined events. Worldly power and possession by him were trampled underfoot. In humility he had turned his back upon the emoluments of scholarship to labor among savages in the remote wilderness. The fame he had achieved by the rediscovery of Monterey was not of his choosing. Although he counted all earthly things as dross he knew the action of Bucareli meant the downfall of his spiritual kingdom. In the flutter of foreign sails he read a menace to Spain's sovereignty on the coast. And so it happened that in the same year that Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Dabney Carr in the Raleigh tavern were pleading the cause that was to wrest the Atlantic colonies from George III., an aged cripple in coarse robe of gray serge, tied at the waist with a girdle of hemp, employed his splendid eloquence in the viceregal palace of the Mexican capital to save the Pacific coast from the hands of navigators who with roving commissions of conquest from European kings and emperors were cruising in the wake of Spanish indecision.

Here, again, Monterey was playing an all-important part in history, for it was the fame Junípero had won through its rediscovery that sped his message to the Viceroy and through him to the King. The humble monk had made the long journey from Monterey with no other escort save an Indian acolyte, and though lame, infirm, and of lowly mien, was received with the consideration due an accredited ambassador.

Bucareli was not only won over to maintain the Californian settlements, but was fired to achieve new conquests along the upper coast. Junípero's memorial, forwarded to Madrid, reawakened the sentiments his rediscovery of Monterey had stirred. By the King's order every recommendation of the pioneer friar was adopted, offices for California were created at permanent salaries, the treasury at Guadalajara was pledged to the colonization of the Pacific coast and Monterey named as the abiding capital.

Thus an open highway to the sea was unconsciously reserved for the United States. Russia was forced up against the Arctic Circle, England did not gain a foothold south of the island Vancouver named, the privateers tacked toward the South Seas, and when the French explorer, Count de la Pérouse, sailed into the harbor of Monterey the only thing he could do to save his name from engulfing obscurity was to introduce potatoes to a smiling land. The following season, instead of the fleur-delis, potato blossoms in the flowering Carmel were the only token that the King of France had ever had designs upon the coast.

[ OLD MEXICAN JAIL.]