Few events in Spanish history since the expulsion of the Moors three centuries before had occasioned the joy that greeted the news of the rediscovery of Monterey. In the Mexican capital cathedral bells pealed throughout the night, rockets flared in the sky, and guns in the forts kept up a cannonade. Later, in Madrid the rejoicing was even more tumultuous. Royal salutes were added to the acclaim and the King declared a public holiday. A sandalled monk, seeking neither gain nor temporal glory, the leader of a handful of Franciscan pioneers, had restored a fabled harbor to the world. 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.