for the camp, Portola took Fages, Crespi, and a soldier for guard, and
went to the cross to see if any vessel had visited the spot. They found
around the cross a ring of arrows stuck in the ground, some of which
were decked with feathers; others had fish and meat attached to them,
while at the foot of the cross was a small pile of shell-fish. As
Portola, Fages, and Crespi walked along the beach and looked out over
the bay and noted its calm and placid waters, with its swimming seals
and spouting whales, they broke forth with one voice, "This is the Port
of Monterey which we have sought. It is exactly as reported by Sebastian
Vizcaino and Cabrera Bueno."[39]

Remembering the good water at the camp on the Rio del Carmelo, Portola
ordered the expedition to Carmelo Bay by direct line, while he, with
Fages and Crespi, proceeded around the Point of Pines. They found it
well covered with pine trees, many of them large enough for masts of a
ship. They also came upon a grove of cypress at a point beyond (Cypress
Point), and arrived at camp after a walk of four good leagues. Here they
awaited the arrival of the San Antonio.

On May 31st the paquebot was sighted near Point Pinos. The soldiers made
signals, to which the ship replied with her guns, and before night had
dropped her anchor in Monterey Bay, which was pronounced by the sailors
to be a most famous port.

On the 3d of June, 1770, under a shelter of branches near the oak where,
in 1602, Vizcaino's Carmelite friars had celebrated mass, Don Gaspar de
Portola, with his officers, soldiers, and people of the land expedition,
Fray Junipero Serra and Fray Juan Crespi, Don Juan Perez, captain of the
San Antonio, Don Miguel del Pino, his second in command, together with
the crew, assembled to establish a presidio and mission. The father