When the war at last began, Captain John Drake Sloat, Commodore of the Pacific Squadron, was at Mazatlan, Mexico, in the frigate _Savannah_. He heard the news on June 8th, and sailed at once for Monterey, California, where he found the _Warren_, the _Cyane_, and the _Levant_ at anchor. A force of two hundred and fifty men from the ships took possession of the town, and Commander John B. Montgomery of the _Portsmouth_, took possession of the settlement on San Francisco Bay the following week. The capitulation of Sutter’s Fort, on the Sacramento, and a couple of other stations followed. [Illustration: R. F. Stockton. _From an engraving by Hall of a painting on ivory by Newton, 1840._] On July 19th “the Pathfinder,” John C. Frémont, reached Monterey, and he, with one hundred and fifty riflemen, was sent in the _Cyane_ to take possession of San Diego. The British liner _Collingwood_, bearing Admiral Sir George F. Seymour on board, was in port at this time, but there is no reason to suppose that the admiral was there in any other capacity than that of a spectator. Anyway, the _Collingwood_ soon sailed from the coast. Then, on July 23d, Sloat gave up the command. He was in bad health and glad to escape the responsibility of the situation. The more vigorous Captain Robert Field Stockton took his place. Stockton’s first move was against Los Angeles. He had only three hundred and fifty men, all told, in the party that he landed at San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles, and these were armed with only ninety muskets and a few carbines, but cutlasses and boarding-pikes were plentiful. Indeed, when some of the enemy appeared under a flag of truce, Stockton felt obliged to resort to a trick (since familiar to cowboys with cattle for sale) to make his force seem larger than it was. He marched them around some buildings in a way to make them appear as an army several times three hundred and fifty. He also covered up all the six-pounders in his artillery but left a thirty-two’s muzzle peering out as if by an oversight. The trick, it is said, succeeded well. Anyway, Stockton, after falling in with Frémont’s men, _en route_, entered Los Angeles without opposition on August 13, 1846. The next day the Mexican governor, Andres Pico, and General José Maria Flores, were paroled. [Illustration: Perry’s Expedition Crossing the Bar at the Mouth of the Tabasco River. _From a lithograph designed and drawn on stone by Lieutenant H. Walke, U. S. N._] After that Stockton organized a state government with Frémont at the head of it. Frémont then went to Sacramento to recruit men for an expedition which Stockton planned against Acapulco (there were plenty of United States citizens in the California region), but before the expedition was ready news came that the Mexicans had rallied against Los Angeles, under the lead of ex-Governor Pico and General Flores, who had broken their parole. The garrisons at Santa Barbara were also reported in danger.