DAWN AND THE DONS 151
sent nine boats ashore, with some two hundred armed men, and four field guns. The force was landed, with intent of secrecy, near Point Pinos, three or four miles west and oceanward of Monterey, but word of it came promptly to Sola, who sent a small detachment under Sergeant Jose Estrada to reconnoitre.
Outnumbered twenty to one, all it could do was to embarrass the invaders in their advance on Monterey, where Estrada rejoined Sola.
Then, according to Chapman,
“there fol-
lowed a brief encounter at Monterey, where by this time, Sola had a force of some eighty men. Sola deemed it prudent to retreat, and did so in safety, carrying with him some munitions and the archives of the province.” Simultaneously with Sola’s retirement, the entire civil population of Monterey moved out on horseback, most of the women
and
children
being
taken
to Soledad,
where a Mission had been established. Sola made his headquarters at the Rancho del Rey in the Salinas valley, some twenty miles from Monterey, where he reorganized his forces, and mapped out a campaign for the recapture of California’s capital. Here his small army grew in numbers, mainly through reinforcements from
San Francisco and San Jose, until it included some two hundred Spaniards and a number of Indians, the latter
variously and primitively accoutred. Feeling that he could now meet the enemy on something like equal terms, Sola, about a week after retiring from Monterey, advanced to the invaded capital only to find it deserted, looted and partially destroyed.
