Monterey, on the Pacific, is a small village founded by the Spaniards in 1771, at the southern extremity of a bay of the same name, near the 36th degree of latitude, about a hundred miles south of the great bay of San Francisco, and about three hundred and fifty miles north from the town of Angeles, where the Commandant Micheltorena was resting with his troops when the events in question occurred. Whilst Commodore Jones was visiting the port of Callao, in September, 1842, he received from Mr. John Parrott, our consul at Mazatlan, a copy of a Mexican newspaper of the 4th of June, containing three official declarations against the United States, which he regarded as "highly belligerent."[25] He also obtained a newspaper published in Boston, quoting a paragraph from the New Orleans Advertiser of the 19th April, 1842, in which it was asserted,--upon what the editor deemed authentic information,--that Mexico had ceded the Californias to England for seven millions of dollars. These documents reached our sensitive commodore at a moment when his suspicions were aroused by other circumstances. For, on the 5th of September, Rear-Admiral Thomas, a British commander, sailed from Callao in the Dublin having previously despatched two of his fleet with sealed orders just received from England. The whole fleet, he believed, was secretly on its way to Panama to embark reinforcements of troops, from the West Indies, to take armed possession of the Californias in conformity with the allegation of the Boston and New Orleans editors.[26] Commodore Jones immediately hastened from the port of Callao to Lima, where, in a conversation with the American chargé d'affaires, Mr. Pickett, he formed the decided opinion that there would be war not only with Mexico but with Great Britain also.[27] Accordingly, he lost no time in preparing for sea, and on the 7th of September, sailed for the coast of Mexico.