Chapter 214: Chug-Chug (1)
“Huff, huff.”
The cloth covering his nose and mouth against the cold grew damp each time he exhaled the breath he had just drawn in.
Perhaps because the weather was bitterly cold, a thin layer of ice formed on the damp cloth in an instant, only to melt again under the warmth of his breath as he exhaled.
—Neighhh!
“Hm?”
The man, who had been fully focused on riding and riding without pause, heard a horse cry out when someone pulled on the reins ahead. He tugged on his own reins as well and brought his mount to a halt.
“Whoa, whoa. What is it, man!”
When he shouted toward the guide at the front, the guide, who had a white feather tucked into his hair, raised a hand and pointed toward the far horizon.
“That is Canada. Where the British live.”
“So this means we’ve reached the end of our Nouvelle-France?”
As soon as Charbonneau, who was serving as interpreter, hastily translated the man’s words into the natives’ language, the guide quietly nodded.
“Hahaha! So that’s how it is!”
Joachim Murat, commander of the expedition, who had spent more than four full months riding and riding before finally reaching the end of Nouvelle-France, stopped before a vast unseen lake and slipped his feet out of the stirrups, leaping down from his horse.
“Which means I, Murat, am the first Frenchman to set foot on this land.”
Murat untied the baggage strapped to his horse’s back and pulled out the tricolor flag from inside.
“Soldier, tie this to the top of the tallest tree here.”
“Yes, Major!”
With dozens of expedition members watching, the tricolor flag brought from Paris began to flutter atop the tree.
This was the 51st parallel north.
In later years, it would be called the French State of Minnesota.
Early November, 1794.
“As this is the first time our United States has received a state guest since the founding of the nation, our arrangements must have been lacking in many ways. Thank you for showing understanding without complaint.”
“Not at all, President Washington. Your generosity was more than I deserved. Once you retire, why not travel to Paris? I will personally host you.”
After exchanging a final farewell with President George Washington, I boarded our French frigate anchored at the dock.
“Your Excellency Guillaume, farewell!”
“We Americans will never forget Your Excellency and France’s sacrifice!”
“Haha, thank you! Thank you!”
Half a year had already passed since I first set foot on the American continent, and nearly two months had passed since I came to the United States. At last, I could finally leave Philadelphia.
If I came again for some other reason, Washington, D.C. would probably be the capital by then, so this was a complete goodbye to Philadelphia.
Now that American business was fully finished, all that remained was to indulge in the joy of development. To think this was business, not diplomacy, where one wrong move could cause something catastrophic. What a neurologically healthy thing that was.
“Minister.”
No, look who this was. Wasn’t this Mr. Baldy, who had dumped his work on me? What brought him all the way from Louisiana to distant Philadelphia?
“Did you perhaps come to see me off?”
If so, that might have been a little moving.
“This is no time for jokes. Look at this—look at this!”
Tch. Figures.
With a sigh, I took the stack of papers Talleyrand handed me and quickly read through them. They were a report. A report filled with numerous figures and a brief map attached.
If not for a few words before those numbers—words like coal and iron ore—it really looked like a company accounting report.
“The estimated coal reserves are about… wait a minute. Did I read that number wrong?”
I blinked several times, rubbed my eyes several times with my hand, and read the report again.
“…Thirty million tons?”
What the hell is this? This is scary. Why is the unit ten million, not one million?
“It’s not just the coal! Read the part below that again!”
“An iron ore vein has been found in the border region with British Canada. Its full size has not yet been determined. However, even by simple visual inspection, the reserves are estimated to easily exceed ten million tons.”
“This is huge, absolutely huge! They even found a potassium nitrate mine in Arkansas!”
There, see? I told you. This was guaranteed to explode upward.
The face that was usually so expressionless was nowhere to be seen. Talleyrand’s face was visibly flushed.
“Minister! Is this really the time to be thinking about anything else?! This is the greatest discovery in French history!”
So he came all the way to Philadelphia by ship over the course of a week while this excited? I was honestly worried he might collapse from high blood pressure. He already had a rounded belly, so he wasn’t like ordinary people.
“Hey, hey, monsieur, please calm down.”
“How can I possibly calm down right now?! We must bring over one million—no, two million—people from the homeland and pour them into America at once!”
Talleyrand was almost red as a beet now, flinging both arms around as he spoke.
Mm. It really was odd. The last time I saw him, he had definitely been saying, “Hmph. Talleyrand has no need for a place like America. Talleyrand prefers splendid Europe over some backwater like that.” Yet overnight he had completely flipped like this.
I let most of what Talleyrand, red as a communist, was saying pass in one ear and out the other while stroking my chin. There was no value in listening further when it all amounted to the same thing—bring over people and plant them in Louisiana. It was better to use my head productively instead.
Let’s see. Thirty million tons of coal and ten million tons of iron ore. If a simple visual inspection yielded numbers like that, didn’t that mean the actual amount would be even greater once they started digging? What kind of holy moly guacamole Robocar Poli nonsense was this…
I turned my head slightly and asked the captain of the ship I was on for a map, and our kind captain hurriedly brought me a map of America.
Combining the map made in the 1780s that the captain gave me with the map my expedition drew, I could roughly guess what was where and what ought to be around there.
The border region with British Canada—so they meant the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes where Detroit was and where Ford would later be born. No matter how dense I was, I knew legendary companies like Ford.
Since the iron ore was near the Great Lakes, the straight-line distance from there to Nouvelle-Orléans in Louisiana was about 1,850 kilometers. Hm. Wasn’t Seoul to Busan roughly 400 kilometers?
We’re fucked.
“Seriously, is there not a single easy thing in this world?”
Wow. If we hauled that 1,850 kilometers on foot, loaded it onto ships, and then sent it to France, we’d go bankrupt just paying freight. Damn, that’s insane.
The euphoria I had felt at hearing about thirty million tons of coal and ten million tons of iron ore vanished in an instant, replaced by misery. Was I going to end up bipolar at this rate? I’d have to slip someone a bribe and get a psychiatry department opened at Les Invalides Hospital in Paris as soon as possible.
Clutching my throbbing head again and going back over the map in detail, a few relatively workable methods did emerge.
Land transport was out. We hadn’t even managed to develop the rails to run the locomotive I’d made, so how were we supposed to move that heavy iron ore over land? If we loaded it onto wagons, the horses would probably all die of overwork.
Which left waterways.
For now, Louisiana and the distant Great Lakes region were connected by rivers. Well, this was a map from twenty years ago, so I didn’t know whether those waterways had since silted up or remained open, but in any case they existed.
Load the iron mined near the Great Lakes onto ships, send it down to Nouvelle-Orléans, then from Nouvelle-Orléans send it onward on ocean-going vessels to Pas-de-Calais.
Or building a steel mill directly at the Great Lakes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. The enormous amount of water a steel mill needed would be easy to secure, and it would be far more efficient to send finished processed goods than raw iron ore.
If a cargo ship could carry the same 300 tons either way, sending 300 tons of refined iron ingots would be far better than 300 tons of unprocessed iron ore.
I silently put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it. I needed nicotine to think.
Build a steel mill by the Great Lakes and use water transport until the railroads were completed. Easy to say, easy to say.
The most troublesome part was that some of that water route… passed through the United States.
Well, what else could I do? I’d have to talk my way through it again.
“Captain. Turn the ship back toward Philadelphia.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be returning to France?”
“Well, things turned out this way.”
I sipped the tea Mr. Jefferson himself had brewed and spoke.
“…So you are asking for a right of passage allowing Frenchmen to travel through the river that passes through the State of Illinois?”
“That’s correct, Secretary Jefferson.”
“Hmm.”
Mr. Jefferson let out a short groan, then began tapping the table between us with his fingers.
“Are you perhaps intending to use it for military purposes?”
“For military purposes?”
That hadn’t even crossed my mind.
“The Great Lakes are near the border with British Canada. Are you not planning to build forts, just as the British have, and project force there?”
“No. Why would I do something that doesn’t make money?”
I frowned and answered.
“I intend to develop the Great Lakes region from now on. I’m not doing this so I can fire guns and cannons around for no reason.”
“So you mean it is not for military purposes.”
“It’s for economic purposes. If it really worries you, I’ll even sign a written pledge that soldiers won’t be allowed to use the waterway at all.”
“Mm.”
Mr. Jefferson stroked his chin and slowly opened his mouth.
“The United States would like to make one proposal as well.”
“What is it?”
“Originally, Spain was generous enough to allow Americans to trade on the lower Mississippi River. But now that France has become the owner of Louisiana, there are those among us Americans who fear that France may suddenly begin controlling the lower Mississippi.”
So… he wanted shared access to the port at Nouvelle-Orléans?
Well, a port didn’t wear out from being used. More people coming and going was a good thing.
“Then how about this? Let the citizens of both nations freely use the waterways for all non-military purposes.”
“I’m in favor of that, Secretary.”
The two of us clasped hands.
“Vice Minister Talleyrand.”
“Yes, Minister.”
“That clause saying the military of both countries may not use the waterways, you know?”
“That’s right.”
“Then can a private security force belonging to a company use them?”
“There would be no diplomatic problem with that.”
“Kehehehe. Exactly, right?”
Not long after that, the Ears of the Nation Security Guard in Paris began hiring more former grenadiers who had once served under Manager Oudinot.