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. [Illustration OLD MEXICAN JAIL.] The relief the Viceroy sent to Monterey in response to Junípero's plea came none too soon. For thirty-seven days the latter's boyhood friend and lifelong collaborator, Palou, and his comrades at Carmel had gone without a tortilla or a crumb of bread, subsisting patiently on a little meal ground from peas. But now began the years of mission prosperity and peace, and thereafter in Monterey was presented in miniature the story of the glory and decline of Spain. For half a century it was the brilliant capital of Spain's new empire. It was a thriving metropolis and the gay seat of the Spanish Court fifty years before the settlement at San Francisco became more than a straggling pueblo, struggling to survive against wind and sand. In fact, for two generations after the founding of Monterey San Francisco's chief claim to distinction was that the first craft to pass through the pillared channel that leads to its incomparable harbor was a launch hewn from a redwood felled by Ayala on the banks of the Carmel.