1636: Seas of Fortune (12 page)

Philip had no particular duties at this moment, and decided to see if David was in the mood to explain what was going on. He found David peering across an odd-looking compass. It had the usual compass needle and card, but mirrors and slotted vanes were mounted on an outer ring. “What’s that?”

“An azimuth compass. One of your up-time ideas, but made in Nürnberg. It’s for measuring the compass bearing of an object. A landmark, or, if you fiddle with the mirror, a heavenly body.”

David turned the ring, and squinted through an opposing pair of slits. “There’s the Pico de Fogo, the ‘Fire Peak’ of Ilha de Fogo.” A plume of steam rose from it. Plainly, it was a volcano. He adjusted the azimuth circle, and took a second reading. “And Pico da Antonia, on Ilha de Santiago.” The two islands lay near the southwestern end of the Cape Verdes island chain.

“With cross-bearings, I can find our exact position on both your up-time map—it has a little inset of the Cape Verdes—and on my old chart.” David looked up at the sky. “It’s getting close to noon, we’ll take a sun-sight, and then see how good your timepiece is.” David waited until the sun seemed to hang in the sky, and then measured its altitude. Philip called out the time. Grantville Standard Time, that is. GST had been proclaimed by the government after Greg Ferrara had determined Grantville’s new longitude.

“Follow me.” David walked across the gently tilting deck to his cabin, Philip following in his wake. Philip watched as David laboriously calculated the latitude and longitude.

“Hmm, pretty good. In fact, so good as to earn you an invitation to the captain’s table for dinner tomorrow.”

By then, Mount Fogo, the highest peak of the Cape Verdes, had disappeared below the horizon, to the north and behind the
Walvis
and its companions. Its volcanic plume was just a smudge, almost lost in the horizon haze. The great mass of Africa lay only four hundred miles to the east; the wide Atlantic separated them from the Americas to the west.

Over the meal, David explained just how Philip’s wristwatch was going to help them on the next leg. He unrolled a map. “Most ships, if Caribbean-bound, would have turned west from Fogo, run down the fifteen degree line to Dominica.”

Philip nodded politely. He could see the small speck marking the location of Dominica, on the near edge of the West Indies, but he knew nothing about it.

“But that’s not the best sailing for us,” David explained. “We’d have to fight our way southeast, against the current, to then get to Suriname from there.”

“So why not go farther south, and then turn west?”

“Spoken like a true landlubber,” David said, smiling to take out the sting. “If we went south to the latitude of your up-time town of Paramaribo, we would hit the doldrums. Do you understand that term?”

“No wind?”

“Often, nary a breath. Duppy Jonah’s Flytrap. You can be stuck there for weeks, as your provisions spoil and your men’s tempers do the same. The belt of doldrums moves north and south with the sun; that’s one of the reasons we set sail in winter.”

David paused for a bite. “With your fancy wristwatch to help us find our longitude, we can curve gradually south as we head west, hit South America here.” He jabbed his forefinger against the spot marking the up-time town of Cayenne, French Guiana. “We don’t have to sail down a latitude line anymore.”

* * *

“Philip, congratulations. Heyndrick told me that we made a very difficult sailing, thanks to your navigational help.”

“Thanks.” Philip kept his back to her.

Maria waited. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

“Yep.”

“When you’re tired of being a jerk, come and talk to me.” Maria stalked off.

“Wait, Maria,” called Philip, but his voice was lost in the wind, and he didn’t want to follow her and endure the catcalls from the sailors.

The Wild Coast of South America, February 1634

Their first view of Suriname was discouraging. As they cruised northwest along the Surinamese coast from Cayenne, they saw mile after unbroken mile of mangrove swamp. It didn’t look like a place the colonists would want to visit, let alone live.

At last, David led his small flotilla into the mouth of the Suriname River. Here, it was really more than a river, being several miles in breadth. They headed south for what the maps had shown to be the location of the twentieth-century capital of Suriname, Paramaribo, twelve miles upriver. The “Great Encyclopedia” said that it had been settled in the old time line in 1640, and it seemed that the location couldn’t be that bad if it had remained in use for over three centuries. And it added that the site was “on a plateau sixteen feet above low water level, well drained, clean, and in general healthy.” Even here, the river was a mile wide, and eighteen feet deep.

They solemnly raised the flag, and David christened the town “Gustavus.” Gustavus Adolphus was a hero to the Dutch and Germans, and the christening was a cheap price to pay for the Swedish support.

There were signs of a former Indian settlement on the plateau. Whether its abandonment was a heavenly blessing, or a warning, they couldn’t say.

In the days following the landing, they explored the countryside. Despite appearances, the marshes were just a narrow strip on the coast. Behind them lay an area of
zwampen en ritsen
: swamps and ridges. They weren’t sure just how far that terrain extended, but the up-time encyclopedias had told them that if they went far enough south, they would find savannas and the great rainforests.

They had deliberately arrived at the beginning of what the encyclopedia called the short dry season. That, they knew, would be the best time to clear ground. And, once they found it, to mine bauxite. In March, when the long wet season began, they would plant their crops—tobacco, cotton, and various food crops, by preference.

There had been much debate back in Grantville as to how to solve the perennial labor problem of tropical America without resort to slavery. It had to be solved, because the tropics had products that Grantville desperately wanted, like rubber. Part of the proposed solution was to use up-time medical knowledge so that Europeans wouldn’t die off so readily.

The botanical garden at Leiden, which Maria knew so well, was primarily a garden of medicinal plants for the education of the student physicians. So she knew her herbs. In Grantville, she had learned more about disease, and how to avoid it. On the ship, she had insisted that the sailors and colonists eat sauerkraut, to ward off scurvy. On shore, she lectured the settlers on mosquito control. And sanitation. Several of the colonists had gotten some medical training, too, since Maria wasn’t planning a permanent stay.

* * *

Carsten Claus and Johann Mueller walked along the wooded ridge line, grateful for the shade that the scrub forest provided. Even though they were miles from the sea, there were shells and shell fragments everywhere.

Carsten bent to pick up a particularly interesting one. It was egg-shaped, and mottled red in color, and it shone as though it was made of the finest Chinese porcelain. It was a cowry, a snail shell. Like the cowries of Africa, which Carsten had seen in a nobleman’s collection, it had a ribbed slit opening. In Africa, that made it a fertility symbol.

Frau Vorst was right, Carsten thought, this must be an ancient sand dune. Carsten decided to save the shell for her; she loved to collect curiosities. He also decided not to say anything about its symbolic significance.

Johann Mueller, a glassmaker, was more interested in the sand. Every so often he would pick up a handful and bring it so close to his eyes that Carsten wondered whether Johann was nearsighted.

It wasn’t common for fledgling colonies to have glassmakers, although Carsten had heard that there was one in Jamestown, Virginia. But it was the second part of the master plan to make a tropical colony viable without resort to slavery.

The up-timers knew they had to find a way to get the local Indians to work, day in, day out, without coercion. And Captain de Vries, who had been to both North America and the Caribbean, told them that there was only so much one could accomplish with the standard trade goods. An Indian might work to acquire one steel knife, but he didn’t need a dozen. Strong liquor was a possible lure, but it had its own disadvantages.

Knowing that glass beads were a good article of trade, the Company had decided to coax a glassmaker to join the colony. That way, they could sell or barter a variety of glass articles, not just beads, and not just to the Indians, but also to Europeans in Guiana and the islands.

On the long voyage over, Carsten had delicately drawn out the details of Johann’s background. Johann was a Thuringer from Lauscha, a journeyman with many years experience, who had failed to make master. Solely for economic reasons, he assured Carsten. He hadn’t botched his masterwork or been caught seducing his mentor’s daughter.

Carsten was inclined to believe him. You could only become a master in a guild if you found a town whose guild chapter had a vacancy. Because of the war, the demand for glassware had declined, and masters who were scrounging for work weren’t likely to welcome a newcomer.

“In this Suriname,” Johann said, “I don’t have to marry an ugly old widow just to get her husband’s shop. And I don’t have to worry about competition.”

Just about pirates, Indians, jungle beasts and tropical diseases
, thought Carsten, but he kept the thought to himself.

“Oh, look at this,” Johann chortled. “This sand, it’s almost a pure white. And look at the size of the grains. They are so even, it’s beautiful.”

Carsten was reminded of the adage,
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder
. But that, too, he kept to himself.

* * *

“Captain, the plan won’t work. It’s hopeless. You should just take me back to Hamburg.” The speaker was Denys Zager, the master sawyer hired by the Company. They knew that Suriname had plenty of wood, so why not sell wood articles to the Indians? Things they couldn’t make with their primitive tools. And Zager’s planks would also be used for constructing buildings and furniture for the colonists. Zager would cut the wood and the colonist’s carpenter would do the fine crafting.

Unfortunately, the person who
hired
Zager, on the Company’s behalf, wasn’t the one who had to
work
with Zager. That is, poor David. Zager was the sort of person who, if he found a pot of gold at one end of the rainbow, would complain that there wasn’t another pot at the other end.

David sighed. “What’s the problem?”

“The Company wants me to build a wind-powered sawmill. Like the one Cornelis Corneliszoon had invented in 1593. A wonderful idea.”

“And the Grantville-made saw blades are satisfactory, I suppose.” They were, of course, better than anything he had seen before, of course, but Zager would never admit it. They had been provided on the theory that it was better to use steel to make saw blades and use them locally to manufacture wood articles, than to make steel trade goods that would have to be produced at home.

“Only . . . where’s the wind? All we get here is a light breeze.”

“What about using a water wheel?”

“Well . . . the most efficient water wheel is an overshot. Water comes down from above, onto buckets. But you need a decent drop, and where’s the drop?” Zager waved his arm toward the placidly flowing Suriname River. “Not there, I assure you.”

David shrugged. “Come with us upriver, perhaps we can find you a waterfall there. We know from the up-time maps that there are mountains to the south.”

“You want me to live alone in the wilderness, tending my mill by this yet-to-be-located watermill of yours? You will keep me supplied with food and lumber, come instantly to my aid if the Indians attack?”

David started to answer, then thought better of it.

Zager looked triumphant. “I thought not.”

David rubbed his chin. “You said, the ‘most efficient’ wheel. So what are the alternatives?”

Zager said nothing.

“Well?”

Zager sighed. “I suppose we could make do with an undershot wheel. If we must. It just needs flowing water, to strike the floats.” He spat. “But this river is rather slow-flowing. We won’t get a lot of power out of it.”

“Then we will find you a livelier river. Or we will have to bring you oxen, or donkeys. And, until then, if you don’t want to hassle with an undershot wheel, you can saw the old-fashioned way, in a pit with a platform over it.”

“Hmmph. At least as the senior man, I’d be at the top of the pit, where I can breathe. But all right, we’ll try the undershot wheel. Once I figure out where the current is strongest . . . probably by falling in and drowning.”

* * *

Heinrich Bender, formerly of Heidelberg, was clutching a piece of sketch paper in one hand, and a rock in the other. “Frau Vorst, Frau Vorst, we found it!”

Maria looked up. “Bauxite, you mean?” The sailors and colonists were searching creek beds and other rock exposures in the vicinity of old-time-line Paranam, some miles south of Gustavus, because the up-time encyclopedias had said that bauxite was mined there. Maria had divided them into groups, and given each a “wanted” sketch showing what bauxite looked like. Maria, who was an experienced artist, had made the drawings back in Grantville, basing them on photographs in various up-time field guides owned by the school libraries.

Heinrich nodded.

“Let’s see.” He handed her the paper and the rock. Maria compared her sketch with the specimen. The sketch was deliberately done in charcoal, to avoid misleading the searchers—bauxite could be white, yellow, red, or brown. This specimen was red.

For bauxite, the telltale sign was its “raisin pie” texture. Okay, the up-timers called it “pisolitic.” Yep, the pisolites—little pea-sized concretions—were present in Heinrich’s find.

Heinrich was fidgeting with excitement. Maria wasn’t surprised; David had promised a bounty to the first person to find bauxite. “Well, is it bauxite? Is it?”

“Looks promising, bear with me.” Maria tried scratching the rock with her fingernail. She brushed away the white powder to make sure that it was the rock, not her fingernail, which had succumbed. Yes, there was the scratch. That meant that on the Mohs’ scale of hardness, the rock was less than 2.5. Bauxite had a hardness ranging from 1, like talc, to 3, like calcite. A bit harder than most clays.