1636: Seas of Fortune (48 page)

Off to port, Haruno could see Horseshoe Bay, and beyond it, the stretch of open water leading to Angel Island. Richardson Bay and Raccoon Strait were hidden by the northern headlands, but shown on his copy of the encyclopedia map of San Francisco.

Alcatraz Island was directly ahead, and, on starboard, the coast of what would become the modern city of San Francisco. It didn’t look much like what was shown on the map.

Studying the color of the water, and the behavior of the waves, Haruno was leery of the narrow passage between Alcatraz Island and the San Francisco peninsula. “Reduce sail!” he ordered. He wanted more time to decide how to proceed.

“Any sign of the longboat?” he called up to the lookout in the crow’s nest.

“No sign, Captain!”

Tokubei tapped his shoulder, and pointed at Richardson Bay, which had come into view on the port side.

“Looks lovely,” Haruno acknowledged, “but I can’t sail closely enough into the wind to take advantage of it.”

“We could set out the other boat and warp ourselves in,” Tokubei suggested.

“True. But unless you see our longboat hiding there, I think it best to look for an anchorage downwind. We have to head southeast to rescue Iroha-hime, anyway.”

The captain ordered a course set to take them between Angel Island and Alcatraz. This required that they sail close-hauled, but they were still enjoying the assist of the flood tide.

As they sailed deeper into the Bay, Captain Haruno ordered that the ship be brought around, first to an easterly heading, then southeast, then south. It was now the
Ieyasu’s Maru
’s turn to pass between Yerba Buena and Clark’s Point, and when they did so, a cry went up. “The boat, the boat!”

“A fair anchorage,” said Tokubei.

Captain Haruno nodded. “We’ll pass the night here, and greet her ladyship tomorrow.”

* * *

The next day, they were ready to sail out of Yerba Buena cove and proceed south. Unfortunately, Susanoo the Wind God had other ideas. Over the course of the night, the wind had veered, from northwest to northeast to southeast. It was impossible to sail out of their anchorage.

Kinzo and Jiro requested permission to take the longboat south, to bring word to Iroha-Hime that help was on the way. The longboat, after all, could be rowed.

Captain Haruno refused. “I need the longboat to scout ahead and take soundings.”

In the evening, the wind died down altogether, but by the second day after their entry into the Bay, it had picked up again, and blew once more from the northwest. By noon, they were at the southern tip, and the longboat was winding its way through the sloughs toward Iroha-Hime’s camp.

South Bay

Much to both Iroha and Matsuoka’s relief, the
Ieyasu Maru
had sailed into sight before the deadline Matsuoka had set had passed.

But its arrival sparked a new debate. Who was to board the
Ieyasu Maru
, and who would be escorted back by the land route? Iroha of course wanted to rejoin her husband, and she pointed out that the
Ieyasu Maru
could afford her and her maid the privacy she would have lacked on Tadateru’s little boats. Matsuoka thought that she would be safer on the
Ieyasu Maru
, than on an overland route exposed to Indian attack, and hence was no longer willing to insist on her immediate return. Of course, if she went, so would he, and her other personal guardsman.

Jiro and Saburo, reunited, thought that it might be their duty to their lord to rejoin him, even though they would much rather be on horseback than on a ship again. Matsuoka sensed their discomfort, and eased their conscience by ordering them back to Monterey.

Hachizaemon was anxious to be back on a ship again, even with a strange new captain. The other shipwrecked sailors had decided that San Francisco Bay was unlucky, and they wanted no more of it. . . . Even if the alternative was getting on top of a horse.

Hence, it was just Iroha, Koya, Matsuoka, his junior samurai, and Hachizaemon who boarded the
Ieyasu Maru
, and the rest rode, whether happily or painfully, for Monterey Bay. They would bring word to Date Masamune that his daughter was safe on board the
Ieyasu Maru
.

Near modern Oakland, California

Captain Haruno lowered his spyglass. “I saw no sign of this supposed cairn.”

“It isn’t easy to find stones to pile up if you land on a marsh,” Tokubei pointed out. “And even if you find them, the pile would probably sink.”

“I suppose we had best send out search parties,” said Haruno. “We want to make sure that Lord Matsudaira made a successful crossing.”

“If he didn’t he might be stranded on Angel Island. Or even on Alcatraz.”

“That is so. Tokubei, you take one boat; have Hachizaemon take another. Explore a half-day’s march inland, and return. In the meantime, I will take the
Ieyasu Maru
around Angel Island and see if any stranded Nihonjin put in an appearance.”

“You are sure you want to split our forces in three?”

“I think it is an acceptable risk. The Monterey Bay colony has not had any violent confrontations with the local Indians, and Iroha-hime found the South Bay Indians to be helpful. In any event, we aren’t moving far apart. If you need help, fire a gun. The sound should carry well enough over the water.”

* * *

Each of the two search parties included several of the
Ieyasu Maru
’s miners; Haruno had figured that since they had to search the countryside anyway, they might as well keep their eyes open for something useful. Iwakashu was with Tokubei’s contingent. Tokubei had allowed his men to spread out, provided they stayed within hailing distance.

After about an hour of wandering, Iwakashu approached Tokubei. “Sir, you need to see this.”

Tokubei followed the mining engineer, who led him to a large patch of exposed rock.

“What am I looking at?”

“The cap of Daikoku,” said Iwakashu mysteriously. Daikoku was, Tokubei knew, a Buddhist God of Wealth. He was usually depicted as a fat, happy man with a sack of treasure slung over one shoulder, and holding a magic mallet aloft with his free hand.

“Please, explain what you mean. I don’t see any gold here . . .”

“Gold? No, not likely. Possible, but not likely. But this is a place strong in yin, where treasures are hidden beneath the surface.

“This rock is well weathered. Here is
sekitekkou
, the red earth of iron, and there is
kattekkou
, the brown earth of the same metal.” A modern geologist would call them hematite and limonite. “You see how different they are from the dull rock nearby?

“I call them the caps of Daikoku, because they often lie above a deposit of metal ore. Most often,
outtekou
or
oudoukou
.” Those were pyrite and chalcopyrite. “What miners call ‘fool’s gold.’”

“Okay, you’ve had your little joke,” said Tokubei. “Let’s go back now.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” said the miner.

“Understand what?”

“That we can make sulfur from them. The Chinese roast
outtekou
over charcoal; the breath of Huchi, the goddess of the volcano, emerges from it, and cools to make sulfur.”

Sulfur. Tokubei knew that to Lord Masamune, sulfur might be more valuable than gold. The shogunate restricted the supply of gunpowder to the colonists, perhaps fearing that they would one day try to force their way back into Japan. The Dutch would sell more, but they tried to “catch a sea bream with a shrimp”; charge a lot for a small amount.

Gunpowder had three ingredients; charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. Charcoal was easy, in Japan it was made by charring a hardwood,
hannoki
. There were surely American woods that would work well enough. Saltpeter could be collected in certain desert regions, or made from night soil.

But sulfur, Tokubei had thought, was only available as the yellow crystals found near certain hot springs. Hot springs the Japanese explorers had yet to find in America, although some of the mountains Tokubei had seen in his journey down the coast were surely volcanoes, and where there were volcanoes one might hope to find hot springs.

“Say nothing of this to anyone, and I will make it worth your while.”

* * *

Four men met that night in the captain’s cabin of the
Ieyasu Maru
, with a guard posted outside the door.

“So, this sulfur you speak of will enable the grand governor to make his own gunpowder,” said Hosoya Yoritaki. He was the commander of the
Ieyasu Maru
’s samurai marines. “I think that he will find that a most attractive prospect. It is best that we not be dependent on gunpowder from home. It is merely a matter of prudence; we don’t know when we might need it to fend off the Indians, the Spanish, or even the Dutch, and our supply line is very long and frail.”

“I am a big believer in prudence,” said Tokubei. “It is interesting, is it not, that this sulfur deposit is not shown in our maps from Grantville?”

“Most interesting,” Iwakashu agreed. “The up-timers do not know everything. Do you think that the grand governor will communicate this discovery to the shogun?”

There was a silence.

“I think . . . I think,” said Yoritaki, “that the grand governor will be of the opinion that the shogun’s interest is primarily in precious metals, as evidenced by Lord Matsudaira’s mission. There is no lack of sulfur in Nippon, the Land of Fire. There will, I daresay, be no need to speak of so inconsequential a matter.”

“And surely,” said Iwakashu, “if the presence of pyrites in California was information that the shogun should be aware of, the buddhas and kamis would have seen to it that they were shown on those very maps that he was given by the Dutch barbarians.”

A rather foxy expression passed briefly over his face. “So we are, perhaps, obligated by the mandate of Heaven to maintain secrecy, lest this information become known in Japan before the buddhas and kamis are ready to reveal it.”

“If we leave the miners here, the sailors will talk about it once we return to Monterey,” said Captain Haruno. “Even if they don’t realize that we are mining sulfur, or iron, they will think that we are mining gold. And that will attract undesirable attention to this place.”

Tokubei shrugged. “What of it? The colonists of Monterey are
kirishitan
, they are forbidden to return to Japan.”

“But our sailors are not
kirishitan
,” said Yoritaki, “and they can speak of our find once we sail back to Sendai. And the shogun has spies in Sendai, of that I can assure you. For that matter, there is probably at least one spy among our sailors, since they have license to return.

“So we need an excuse for leaving the miners and some samurai here. An excuse that will not excite undue curiosity.”

The others fidgeted.

At last, Iwakashu made a proposal. “In Go, it is wise to sacrifice the smaller group to save the greater one. Let us say that we have found
copper
. It may even be true, as
oudoukou
is a copper ore. Copper is valuable enough that we would want to mine it, but it is not worth shipping back to Japan, where it is plentiful. And it is not a metal that the shogun would mind us controlling. By the time his spies report otherwise, New Nippon will be able to survive on its own.”

“We hope,” Yoritaki muttered.

Lower American River

Kiyoshi, as foreman, did not suffer the indignity of being roped, and hence could scout ahead. He was walking on a large sand bar on the south bank of the American River, near the site of the modern town of Folsom, when he tripped. He started to lever himself up, and then stopped suddenly—he had caught sight of an intriguing glint from a rock a few yards away. He approached it, half-crouched, and, grunting, turned it to better expose the surface of interest. He saw what appeared to be small gold scales.

He proudly showed his discovery to Lord Matsudaira.

Lord Matsudaira, of course, was overjoyed, and insisted that Kiyoshi accept, as a gift, the Lord’s own smoking pipe. It had a bamboo shaft, and a silver mouthpiece and bowl, the latter engraved with the Matsudaira
mon—
three hollyhock leaves in a circle, the same as that of the Tokugawa.

It might have been more useful if they still had any tobacco left, but Kiyoshi appreciated the gesture.

He requested permission to have the miners untied so that they could better search for more gold, and Lord Matsudaira agreed, provided they were tied up again each night.

As Kiyoshi assigned his men to work different sections of the sand bar, he gestured with his new pipe, as if it was a scepter.

* * *

After a week of searching, Kiyoshi’s men had found a few more gold flecks and, in a crevice, a small gold nugget. Unfortunately, as lode mining men, they knew nothing of panning for gold. That was something done in Japan, not by honest miners, but by
yamashi
. Literally, it meant “mountain expert,” but in common usage, a
yamashi
could be a “prospector” or a “swindler.”

Still, Kiyoshi wished he had some
yamashi
with him. But at least Lord Matsudaira was in good humor . . . at least for the moment.

* * *

“Hatomoto Shigehisa.”

“My lord, how may I serve you?”

“Walk with me.” They walked out of sight and hearing of the crewmen of the
Sado Maru
.

“Look at this!” Lord Matsudaira held out his hand, the nugget resting on his outstretched palm.

Shigehisa bowed. “I am overwhelmed, my lord. You have found the gold field.”

Lord Matsudaira lifted his hand in thanks. “Your words are most welcome. But the real gold field must lie further upstream. Above the fork our scouts found previously, the streams run through gorges. The real gold mines must be there, I think, where we can see the very bones of the earth.”

“Will you be taking a boat, milord? The river is at least a foot higher than it was when we first came here.”

“No, I think not. There are two rapids just in the stretch of water we have been working, and I expect that once we enter the gorges, we will find much whitewater. A boat will be too much trouble.”