A new era was at hand. Under the unstable Mexican _régime_, chaos followed confusion. In the twenty-four years that intervened before the Stars and Stripes, hoisted over Monterey, proclaimed the advent of the golden age in the West, that city saw thirteen governors come and go. Communication with Mexico was difficult. A governor at Monterey when he rose in the morning did not know whether to salute the flag of a liberator, an emperor, a rebel, a president, or a king. Monterey, too, had turmoils and revolutions of her own. Ambitious intrigue placarded her adobe walls with flaming ultimatos. The alcalde and regidores of one day were prisoners in irons the next. Anarchy to-day sat gravely in the Ayuntamiento to-morrow, and governors turned fugitive as usurpers assumed control. Yet these Monterey revolutions were anæmic, attended with less shedding of blood than the bull-fights that celebrated the triumphs of her voluble warriors. It was the opera-bouffe warfare of little statesmen making their clamoring exit from the stage of history. The spectacular caballero in his jacket laced with gold was passing away with the phantoms he had chased. The Mission bells grew silent. New horsemen thronged over the mountain roads. New sailors cast anchor in the harbor. A new flag floated over the presidio, a flag that was not to be pulled down. The American Republic had reached the western sea. Of these later events the guide informs you with some fidelity to the facts as you start on the famous Twenty-Mile Drive. He tells you how the brig _Natalia_, upon which Napoleon escaped from Elba, was wrecked by storms in Monterey Bay in 1834 to typify that Europe's power over California was gone forever, and he will sell you fragments of the wreck; he will tell you how Commodore Jones in 1842, by mistake but in prophecy of things to come, hoisted the American ensign over Monterey; how in 1846, that flag, in the hands of Commodore Sloat, went up to stay; how in the following month the first newspaper published on the Pacific coast made its appearance in Monterey; in the corners of the public squares he will show you the cannon of John C. Frémont, and he will point you to the Gabilan Mountains where on their highest peak overlooking Monterey the famed "pathfinder" unfurled the colors of his country and bade defiance to the Mexicans, even before he knew that war raged between the two republics. Then your proud historian will show you the ancient adobe capitol where in 1849, just one hundred years from the time Junípero set sail from Majorca, the first convention met to form the commonwealth of California,--a convention which, though composed in the major part of adventurers, some of whom looked upon murder as a pastime, sent to Washington the unanimous declaration that slavery should never stain the Golden West, and thus revived the great conflict in the Senate and caused the famous compromise. [Illustration FISHING VILLAGE.]