large crosses on the coast of Monterey, whose geographical identity they could not yet confirm. (see Timeline of the Portolà expedition). In April 1770, Portolá gathered a new and smaller party for another overland journey from San Diego to Monterey. This party included Pedro Fages with twelve Catalan volunteers, seven leather-jacket soldiers, two muleteers, five Christian Indians from Baja California, and friar Juan Crespí. They arrived at Monterey Bay on 24 May. That afternoon, Portolá and Crespí revisited the large wooden cross their party had planted five months earlier on a hill just south of Point Pinos near the northern tip of the Monterey peninsula. "This is the port of Monterey without the slightest doubt," wrote Crespí in his diary. Strict discipline to build Spanish presidio Miguel Costansó selected the site of the presidio and drew the first plans and maps. Pedro Fages, left in command of the Monterey soldiers after Portolá sailed back to Mexico, imposed strict discipline on his soldiers to construct the presidio. He set the work they had to do in a certain time, harshly punishing soldiers caught resting or rolling a cigarette. Heavy rains punctuated the spring and winter of 1770–1771, but Fages permitted no let-up in the work. His soldiers had to trudge through mud to the forest to chop wood, then drag their mules out of the mud and head home. They had no chance to wash or mend their clothes during the six-day work week; Fages told them to do that on Sundays. This work regime lasted a year and a half, until complaints by the soldiers persuaded padre president Junípero Serra to intervene: Serra told Fages that, as a Christian, he had to observe the sabbath and let men rest on Sundays. In late June 1771, Fages wrote to viceroy Carlos de Croix in Mexico to inform him that the Monterey presidio had been built, sending along a simplified map. Spanish fort While Fages established El Presidio Real de San Carlos de Monterrey (the Royal Presidio of Saint Charles of Monterey), Junípero Serra founded Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, with the original location occupying the present day (remaining) chapel Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo. Monterey became one of a series of presidios, or "royal forts," built by Spain in what is now the western United States. In 1783, it had a company of 56 men. Other California-based installations were founded