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 vice-regal 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.