Chapter 11

I sent a missive to Clovis requesting permission to purchase large tracts of the just conquered Eastern Roman Empire. Along the coast in what would be modern Lebanon I wanted to grow bananas. Along the coast in what would be modern Israel I wanted to grow sugar cane. Along the Nile valley, it would be cotton, sugar cane, and bananas. Land around Constantinople would be for growing a delightful spice as of yet unknown in Europe, Asia, and Africa. My query received a positive response:

It was true, but I knew I could easily have afforded to buy the land. Still, the acknowledgment was gratifying. I dispatched someone familiar with our fledgling banana industry to what would be southern Lebanon in modern times. I instructed him to find one or more parcels of land to use. Available water for irrigation, the availability of local help willing to work for us, and proximity to a viable port were all considerations.

Another man familiar with sugar cane cultivation was dispatched to the area along the southern coast of modern Israel, looking for land to grow sugar cane. Three men went to Egypt to scout along the Nile River for available land to grow cotton, bananas, and sugar cane.

I smiled inwardly as the scouts departed, thinking of Clovis’ fondness for the three items. He had a major sweet tooth, and I had experimented to come up with a recipe for sugar cookies he now insisted on having freshly baked every day. When he tried his first banana, he commented that nothing, not even sugar, could taste better. We now make regular deliveries of bananas; picking bunches green the same way they did in my time and letting them hang inside the holds of the ships while they are transported. We had to send at least half of our early production to Rouen to keep up with the appetite of Paris. After trying cotton clothing for the first time, Clovis ordered his old clothing, except what was made from silk, replaced with cotton clothing. Like me, he was beginning to outfit his troops with cotton uniforms.

The mills I built upriver to weave cotton thread into cloth ran from first light to twilight, stopping each evening with just enough light left to shut everything down. Huge banks of windows let in enough light to work by. After dark fell, the maintenance of the mills and the machinery was done by candlelight. We built the second mill a month after the first began operating, and we’d added six more since. We supplemented the cotton we grew with an equal amount of cotton imported from Egypt. Cotton gins, spinning mills, and weaving mills were complete or currently under construction in each of our cities where cotton was grown.

To top it all off, our next generation of silk caterpillars were happily munching on the leaves Jayanti picked for them to eat every day. Tall wooden racks filled the warehouse built just for her silkworms. Each four-foot-wide rack held ten shallow trays that pulled out almost completely, just like drawers. Each tray was covered with a light cloth akin to cheesecloth to keep the caterpillars from escaping. Jayanti kept the trays lined with rice paper, which she threw into the compost when the caterpillars had soiled it sufficiently with caterpillar poop.

I entrusted to Hildoinus, a man who seemed to excel at growing anything green, the task of starting a vanilla plantation outside of Constantinople. I carefully detailed how to propagate, plant, and care for the plants, as well as how to hand pollinate the flowers. I only had a few of the seeds and plants that I had managed to keep growing in pots for the last few years. Hildoinus went to Constantinople and secured land for us. A hundred acres would be plenty for a few years.

Despite all that excitement, four ships were ready to sail two months after my return to Valencia. We stopped at Martil, the port for Tamouda, sending a messenger to let Izem know we’d arrived. His camels began arriving the next day and he excitedly greeted each of my wives and then me.

The first ship contained eight thousand of the fired clay tubes, each ten inches in diameter and three feet long. They would easily reach from both outer wells to the town, as well as to fields to irrigate crops. Casks of cement to use making mortar were unloaded into a warehouse. The desert could obviously provide enough sand to add to the cement to make mortar. The three windmills were here, along with two thousand pounds each of millet and rice. Five hundred empty kilderkins (eighteen-gallon barrels), alfalfa seeds, twenty ceramic bottles of geraniol, twenty amphorae of camphor, and thirty thousand pounds of alfalfa rounded out the cargo. The kilderkins would allow two-hundred-fifty camels to carry nine thousand gallons of water. I personally handed Izem the locked metal box of explosives and the special hex wrench key to wear around his neck. I promised more of the clay tubes, cement, millet, barrels, and explosives in February.

One now-empty ship returned to Valencia, while the Gotberga, the Joelle, and the Marise continued through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. There, they hung a sharp left (excuuuuuuse me, turned hard to port) and sailed south. With most of my wives along for the ride (Audoflede had to stay in Valencia to run things and Ambre and Adele stayed because they were expecting soon) the trip seemed to go much faster. It took eleven days to reach the mouth of the Bambara River (modern Niger River), and twenty days of sailing upriver to reach Bamako. We stayed busy by taking soundings of the river every few minutes and using the harpoon cannons to kill the largest of the crocodiles and reel them in so we could skin them and eat the meat from the tails. We found that we could save powder by reducing the powder charge by two-thirds since we were closer to the crocs than we would be to enemy ships. We had well over four hundred crocodile skins by the time we reached Bamako, and were tired of eating crocodile meat!

The whole city turned out to gawk at the three ships. They had never seen anything like them. Some of the soldiers recognized Tizemt, who put on her “official” royal jewelry just before our arrival, and me. They rushed to get word to King Reba in Koumbi. Unloading was a rather tedious process. With no commercial docks, we had to use the booms on the masts to hoist our cargo ashore. The first thing unloaded was the horses, and then the wagons. Our men who went ashore guided the wagons out of the way so we could continue unloading. Tizemt and my other wives had to hurry ashore with a bunch of our troops to deal with the crush of people clamoring to buy our goods. Much of what we unloaded never got away from the shore before it sold in the informal marketplace that seemed to have sprung up right there. More of my troops stood guard along the shoreline and the gunwales of the ship, watching for crocodiles.

To handle the sales, I assigned Tizemt and my soldiers who had learned Berber and a bit of the Soninke language on our last trip. They got help from the rest of my wives. This far from Oualata and Timbuktu, the prices for the goods were even higher than in Koumbi. Still, we sold the grain for the same amount we charged in Oualata. Copper, camphor, sugar, rum, molasses, honey, rope, olive oil, oranges, and bananas sold nearly as fast as we could unload them. Four days later, everyone was disappointed when I explained that everything else was going to Koumbi.

We had just finished unloading our remaining goods and securing the ships when King Reba and his column of soldiers showed up. He’d been nearby when the messengers found him. For several minutes, all he did was gawk at the three huge ships. Then Tizemt made it even worse by telling him I had ships twice this size and other ships twice as big as those were. I explained that I hadn’t known if the bigger ships would be able to make it upriver all the way to Bamako. From the soundings I took, even the Clovis would be able to make it during the rainy season. He was excited by the smaller boats (repaired ships from Odoacer’s attack on Valencia). We’d towed them behind us all the way here. I gave him four of them, explaining that I hoped to use the other two after we talked. If he found these ships useful, I would be glad to sell him as many more as he wanted.

King Reba decided it would be best to wait until we got back to Koumbi to go through everything I brought for him, so we saddled up and rode with him. He immediately noticed our saddles. I told him I brought five hundred of them to sell if he wanted them. He hadn’t even tried one and could see the benefit of stirrups. Tizemt kept her father’s attention most of the rest of the day excitedly explaining as much as she could about the amazing things she’d seen and experienced in Valencia, as well as about the new salt mining town we were building in the desert.

The trip to Koumbi took ten days with the wagons. Still, the length of the entire trip was but a small fraction of the time the overland trip across the Sahara took and not nearly as dangerous or mind numbing. I gave the King first choice of everything we brought to Koumbi to sell. Aside from buying all the rum, he left most of the trade goods for the people to buy. He raved about how much the new goldfield was producing. The two men I trained had also located the source of the gold for the original goldfield. They were already mining and smelting at both locations.

I gave him three more gifts. The first was a pair of slipper-type shoes made from crocodile leather. The second was a pair of riding boots made from crocodile leather. He had allowed me to measure his feet last time so I could have these made for him. The final gift was chain mail like I wore.

We finally got down to business and he eagerly bought the weapons from Constantinople, the fifteen hundred Mongol short bows, the three thousand Mongol longbows, two thousand more crossbows, all the steel tools, the five hundred pans for gold panning, the twenty telescopes, plus all the camphor, paper, rope, glass panes, brass pumps, saddles, and alfalfa seeds. He bought part of the oranges and bananas, letting me sell the rest in the marketplace with the grains, sugar, molasses, honey, and olive oil. The oranges and bananas were a huge hit and we sold over ten thousand pounds of bananas in half a day--at an outrageous price. I decided that any bananas and oranges we had ready to send when the next ship came here would be sold here instead of to the growing market around the Mediterranean. The one-way trip took just over four weeks, and both would keep that long. Besides, next time I planned to send the Montana, which should reduce the length of the ocean voyage from Valencia by a couple days.

I talked with King Reba, getting his permission to begin logging operations throughout his kingdom and to build one or more sawmills in Bamako or other towns along the river. He was glad to get jobs for the people in the small villages that weren’t near the goldfields. We would use the two remaining captured ships I brought to guide rafts of logs downriver to the sawmills.

He was surprised at my offer to build stone docks at main cities and larger towns along the Bambara River and eagerly accepted my offer to spend half of my share from the gold field building Roman-style roads between his main cities. I told him that I would send engineers next time to oversee building the roads and the docks. He needed to decide which cities he wanted connected by roads, and the route he wanted the roads to follow between those cities.

He approved my purchasing rice and millet from towns and cities along the Bambara River that weren’t in his territory as long as I didn’t sell any of my “special” goods to them. Then I dropped the bombshell, telling him about another goldfield not more than twenty miles downriver from Bamako. He sent twenty of his men with me, including the two who had learned how to locate the source of the gold. Both men had received a lot of recognition for finding the source of the original goldfield and were now wealthy enough to own several slaves.

I also suggested to King Reba that he should first direct any expansion plans to the south, and then west to consolidate control of everything to the ocean south and west of him. I let him know there was yet another fabulously wealthy source of gold to the south of his kingdom. I knew of more than a hundred mines in his current territory: everything from coal and iron to marble, gold, rubies, and diamonds. I apologized because I could only tell him about one at a time. My notes were in my native tongue, which nobody else alive today could read. Since there was no written Soninke language at this time, I couldn’t write down any of the directions for his men to follow.

The second day that we were in Koumbi, King Reba approached me nervously. “I hope my daughter has not overstepped her position, but she told me about your history,” he admitted. I promised that she had my permission to tell him. All my wives and concubines knew, as well as most of their families. She had asked my permission before telling him. I only asked that the secret not be shared widely. He had my permission to tell anyone he trusted and that he felt should know. By now, I thought much of Valencia knew at least part of the story.

“With all these weapons you are selling me, is there something I should know about?” he asked cautiously.

I explained that, in the history I learned in my original time, The Kingdom of Ghana would continue many more hundreds of years. I also explained about the ripples I had already caused. These had already changed so much in Europe and the Mediterranean that very little would happen the way it did in my own history. Showing him one of my cloth maps of the eastern hemisphere, I explained how King Clovis now ruled over many times more territory than he had when I arrived. I told King Reba that I was selling him weapons to both protect his empire and to expand it should he want to, but knew of no attacks against Ghana during his reign in my original history.

We spent two days visiting before returning to the ships. While we were there, Tizemt spent hours every day in the marketplace purchasing slaves and trying to piece families back together. I was surprised that she managed to buy over twelve hundred slaves just months after our last visit. She and I rode ahead of our heavily laden caravan of wagons to each town large enough to have slaves. I was surprised at how common it was for even people in small villages to own slaves.

We definitely had more weight in the wagons on the way back to Bamako. Along with the remaining gold for everything we sold, we had the numerous slaves we bought, letting them ride in the wagons rather than making them walk. In addition, King Reba gave me my share of the gold from the new goldfield, minus half to pay for building roads. The actual mine had produced very little so far, but two thousand slaves panning for gold every day produces a lot of gold nuggets and gold dust.

In Bamako, I contracted with a local farmer to care for my horses that I planned to leave and to keep the wagons for me. That way we didn’t have to bring them with us each time. I also gave him plenty of alfalfa seeds to grow forage for the horses and gave him permission to use or sell any alfalfa beyond what the horses needed. The farmer had been recommended by the King’s soldiers.

I hired ten men in Bamako to cut lumber for me, especially mahogany. I gave each man an axe and a sharpening stone and gave the group three ten-foot two-man felling saws. While Tizemt plied the market, buying slaves, I took the men into the forest and showed them several different varieties of trees I was interested in, then showed them how to use the axes and two-man saws safely. I gave them permission to use two of the wagons, and showed them how to use the wagons and how to use teams of horses to drag large trees.

I taught them how to use block and tackle sets to hoist heavy pieces of tree trunk into the wagon, and left lots of heavy-duty rope and five hundred feet of sturdy steel chain. I suggested that they hire someone who already knew how to sail, and let him sail the boat when they floated several trees downriver at the same time. He’d need oarsmen to operate the boat. I gave them lighter chain to hold the trees together in a raft. Tizemt told me what a fair wage would be so I told the men they would be making twice as much, but I expected them to work hard. When the next ship arrived in three months, we would build a sawmill to cut the trees into lumber. For now, they were to let the cut trees dry.

It was weird not having to buy the property along the river to build the lumbermill, but nobody claimed the land. It was located on a large stream flowing into the Bambara River a mile or so west of Bamako. That way, the trip to town with sawed lumber would be quick and easy. I hired a hundred more men to dig a millrace and to line it with stone. I marked where I wanted it, and explained the declivity needed to make the water run slowly and smoothly down the race.

I then gave them two sturdy branches marked at ten feet to show how wide and deep I wanted the ditch to be after lining it with stone. I told them it would be okay if it was slightly deeper than ten feet, but had to be at least that deep. The upper end of the ditch nearest the river was much wider and deeper to help funnel floating logs into the canal.

The local commander was excited when I hired one of his former troops to be my supervisor. The man had been injured too badly to continue as a soldier. He would now make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to and would pay them each week. Our new saddles with stirrups made it much easier for him to ride a horse.

Tizemt was busy while I was gone, adding nearly two thousand more slaves from Bamako. She also directed those slaves as they bought more slaves and bought and loaded food for the trip back. My other wives were busy as well, buying whatever struck their fancy in the marketplace and sampling the local cuisine. Before we left, Tizemt told everyone in town that one of our ships would be back in about three months with more goods, and would be looking to buy more slaves if the prices were low enough.

Our first stop was to locate the new goldfield. That only took one day and garnered another twenty-three large crocodiles at the site in addition to the fifteen we caught on the way to the site. The tails provided fresh meat for many of the people aboard ship. I’d only left one of the planned two boats in Bamako so we could continue towing one to use for hunting crocodiles. The slaves were stunned that we could have cooking fires aboard ship. After my last trip, crocodile skin boots had become very popular in Valencia. I only gave the boots to our troops to wear, but an entrepreneur now imported crocodile hides from Egypt to make boots and slippers like the ones I’d given to King Reba.