Chapter 174

While Kim Lee-sang was busy scouring the earth of Napa Valley, shedding tears of agricultural joy, a different kind of drama was unfolding to the east.

“Huff, huff… Here, Master Driver! Is this truly it? The land of gold?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” the man replied, flicking the reins. “The Grand Chief said it was so, and I take him at his word, but…”

Slightly to the east of Napa, in the ancestral territories of the Washoe and Mewuk peoples, the first vanguard of English settlers finally arrived. They were a bedraggled lot, caked in the dust of a months-long trek, yet their eyes burned with a feverish, crystalline light. Through a frantic mess of gestures and broken phrases, they secured permission from the local Americans to prospect along the riverbanks.

“Something yellow and shiny! Yellow and shiny! Does it come from here?”

The local tribesman squinted at the pale, frantic stranger. “What is this pale-face babbling about? If it’s shiny things he wants, there are similar bits over that way. Go on, scratch at the dirt if you must.”

“Look! Do you see? This American says there is gold just over there!”

“To the river! Quickly!”

As the Englishmen descended into a collective madness, the local tribesmen gathered to watch the spectacle. There was little friction between them; the newcomers were heralded by friendly gifts from the Federal Express agents who had pre-seeded the region. Moreover, the locals had already been pricked by the “spirit-needles”—the vaccines—that promised protection against the pale-face plagues.

“Huff… Is there really gold here?” one settler muttered, his voice thick with doubt. “We followed the Emperor’s word all this way, but what if…”

“What if it’s a lie?” another whispered. “What if he just sent us to the edge of the world to expand his borders under the guise of a fortune?”

Suspicion began to take root among the weary travelers. The journey of thousands of kilometers had been a brutal master, breeding resentment and fatigue in equal measure. Yet, having come this far, they could not turn back. California was not the mountain of solid gold or the silver-tiled pagan temple they had imagined, but the embers of hope still flickered. Somewhere, hidden beneath the silt, was the glimmer that would make them kings.

They waded into the water, hands trembling as they sifted through the muck.

“Wait,” a man gasped. “What is that? Do you see it? Is it…?”

The silence that followed was heavy with bated breath. A young girl, bolder than the rest, reached into the mud and pulled out a dull, yellow nugget. Following Nemo’s specific instructions for such a moment, she took a rough stone and dragged the metal across its surface.

It did not leave the black mark of pyrite, nor the greenish-black smear of chalcopyrite. It left a streak of pure, brilliant yellow—the unmistakable signature of gold.

The girl collapsed into the shallow pool, the breath leaving her lungs in a sob of relief. Immediately, the shoreline erupted into a cacophony of primal roars.

“It’s real! It’s actually real!”

“Gold! There’s gold in the water!”

“I’m rich! God in Heaven, I’m finally rich!”

The frantic settlers threw themselves into the river, regardless of age or gender, clawing at the sand and sifting through the silt with their bare hands. They filled their bags with gold-flecked earth, howling in a delirium of triumph.

As days turned into weeks, the local Americans watched the Europeans’ tireless, sleepless obsession with growing bewilderment. They realized these were no ordinary stones. If the strangers were hoarding them with such religious fervor, they had to be immensely valuable.

“Why do they value these so much?” a warrior asked, watching a settler kiss a handful of mud.

“In their lands,” the translator explained, “a few of those stones can feed a man for a lifetime. That is the source of their joy.”

“A lifetime?” The warrior’s eyes widened.

As missionaries and merchants from the Continental Covenant began to disseminate information among the surrounding tribes, the “Gold Fever” became an epidemic. Initially, the tribes were skeptical—why dig for something they couldn’t eat? But the logic of trade soon took hold. If the strangers wanted these yellow rocks, why not dig them up and trade them for things that actually mattered?

Soon, the English were not the only ones scouring the hillsides. Local tribesmen joined the hunt, peering into thickets and prying at rocky crevices in search of the glimmering yellow treasure.

However, after a month or two of clutching their hoards of gold, a sobering realization dawned on the settlers.

“Wait… what do we actually do with this gold?”

The silence that followed was deafening. They had come to this land under a solemn oath to the Continental Covenant government, promising to settle and cultivate the territory. At the time, they hadn’t considered the practicalities. In this wilderness, gold could not be eaten, nor could it be spent.

The sophisticated economic systems they had left behind in the East—the dividends from the Order and the Trade Company—were out of reach. In fact, many of the local Americans were taking their gold and moving elsewhere to enjoy their newfound wealth, but the settlers were bound by contract.

When some tried to flee toward the lands of Nueva España, they vanished. The journey was hundreds of kilometers through hostile terrain without the protection of the Federal Express. For the Spanish, a band of rival nationals carrying bags of gold was not a group of refugees—it was a windfall. It was far easier to kill them and take the gold.

It was a trap of their own making. If they wanted to live as rich men, they had no choice but to build a civilization right where they stood.

“I heard that in Asia, gold is worth a fortune!” shouted a former sailor, a man who had seen enough of the world to grasp their only lifeline. “If we build a port! If we build ships and bring in luxuries from the East, then we can truly live like lords!”

“The government said they sent shipwrights and architects to the coast!” another remembered.

“Look! They’ve posted a notice! They’re hiring laborers to build the harbor!”

Driven by a new kind of desperation, the settlers traded their gold-sifting pans for shovels and pickaxes. They poured their labor into the construction of the docks and shipyards Nemo had envisioned. Supplies and experts were already flowing westward in a steady stream. Within a few years, cities would rise, and the gold of California would flow across the Pacific to Asia.

Everything was proceeding exactly according to Nemo’s design.

***

“Look! Another group is coming!”

“How many this time?”

“Fifty? Maybe sixty?”

“You expect us to ferry fifty people all by ourselves?”

The Federal Express was enjoying a period of unprecedented business. Once the existence of gold was indisputably proven, the first wave of settlers acted as the ultimate recruitment agents. They paid the delivery riders extra to carry messages back East—messages designed to lure others into their toil.

“In California, you don’t even have to dig. The gold is just sitting there in the riverbeds, waiting to be picked up.”

The rumor rippled through the Great Lakes, reaching the Iroquois Confederacy and the borders of Minnesota and Wisconsin. From there, merchants carried the tale to the eastern seaboard.

“The West is paved with gold, and you’re still sitting here?”

“Is it true? Can it really be?”

“Of course! Why else would the government be recruiting so many pioneers?”

The fever spread to Virginia, Florida, and the lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy. These were places where the value of gold was understood all too well. Despite the growing prosperity in the developed East, the lure of the West was irresistible. Men packed their lives into crates, believing that if they lived like gentlemen in the East, they would live like kings in the West.

But when they finally reached California after their agonizing struggle, they were met by the grim smiles of the veterans.

“Pick up a shovel, recruit.”

“What? I came for the gold…”

“You want to be rich? Then we need a port first.”

They quickly realized that the land had gold—and only gold.

“I… I want to go home,” one newcomer stammered.

“Mr. Stefano,” a clerk replied coolly, tapping a ledger. “You signed a contract with the Covenant. We paid for your entire journey on the condition that you settle here for at least ten years. Now, pick up the shovel. It’s the best job in town.”

They gritted their teeth and built the ports, the roads, and the houses they would live in. There were no tractors here to clear the land; they had to break the earth with their own hands. In their bitterness, they sent word back to their relatives in the Chesapeake. The gold is everywhere, they wrote. If more people came, perhaps the harbor would be finished sooner, and the trade could begin. And besides, if they had to suffer this labor, why should their cousins be spared?

The steady flow of hundreds of immigrants every month became a river of wealth for those along the route.

“James,” a man said, looking at his son-in-law. “What are you thinking?”

“Father-in-law,” James replied, a gleam in his eye.

Unlike the early United States of another timeline, the constituent nations of the Continental Covenant were inextricably linked. A single Order and a single Trade Company underpinned their shared economy. As people and goods moved, intermarriage became common; Virginians settled in Iroquois lands, and Shawnee warriors found wives in Florida.

The chief of the Shawnee Mekoche clan looked at his English son-in-law, curious about the excitement radiating from the young man. When asked, James laughed and leaned in close.

“Just give me a few men to help,” James said. “I think we’re all about to become very, very rich.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“Hundreds of people pass through our land every month, right? And our tribesmen are the ones ferrying them as delivery riders.”

“True. It’s been a profitable arrangement.”

“Well, those hundreds of people need to eat. They need clothes. They need tools.”

The clan pivoted their entire economy toward the migrant trail. They took the heavy wool fabrics used for tipis, cut them into sturdy patterns, and began selling trousers. Miners heading west needed clothing that could withstand the brutality of the pits, and the “Tipi-cloth” pants became an overnight sensation.

French and English coins began to pile up in the clan’s coffers. They built workshops and organized their kin into a production line.

“I heard the Shawnee made a fortune just by sewing pants,” another chief remarked to his advisors.

“Then we shouldn’t sell clothes. What about food?”

“Those travelers are on a long journey. If we make preserved meats—jerky—we could sell it at a premium!”

One clan sold jerky; another sold buckets and baskets. The Federal Express depots became the centers of bustling marketplaces operated by the local clans. Immigrants, unable to carry everything they needed for a multi-thousand-kilometer journey, were forced to pay inflated prices for supplies.

The clans grew wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. It turned out that the men selling the baskets to hold the gold were making far more money than the miners digging for it.

The Gold Rush, arriving two centuries early, showed no signs of slowing down. And as the shovels bit into the earth of the western coast, the trade route to the Pacific began to open, inch by painstaking inch.