During this long period of Spanish and Mexican rule the history of the Monterey Peninsula was the history of California. With American occupation in 1846 and the discovery of gold in 1848, the center of historic significance shifted to San Francisco, but the romantic days of Spanish chivalry moved on in happy sequence at Monterey, and the joyous spirit of that elder time still finds its full expression on the Monterey Peninsula.
The gathering of the material and the writing of the story have been for me a labor of infinite delight. I can only hope that the reader may find in reading it some portion of the pleasure I have found in writing it.
Tirey L. Ford
San Francisco, 1926
