Chapter 12

Another load of goods for Izem sailed at the end of January, along with fifty troops to accompany his caravan to Tissinte and back. Tissinte, the name of my new town at the salt mine, was derived from the Berber word for salt. Ten of the troops who made the first trip were among those to continue helping the rest learn the Berber and Soninke languages. The new troops had been practicing the languages for three months, and even learned to ride camels. We’d brought fifty camels to Valencia to help train selected troops how to ride and care for them.

The ship returned with a glowing report from Izem. The wall was finished, in large part because nearly two hundred families insisted that they be allowed to go. Since they were all related in some way, he had used some of his own money to purchase additional supplies.

The first two wells and cisterns were complete and operating. Everyone was amazed at the quantity and quality of water the wells provided, and especially how cool the water was. The underground clay pipes ran into town from the first outlying cistern and the first crop of millet had been planted, as well as numerous date palms. The palms were small trees they dug up and transported in clay pots. They had used some of the drinking water they took with them to keep the trees alive. Selecting a salt-free site, they now had a hundred date palms growing in an orchard outside the western town wall, as well as other trees scattered strategically through town to eventually shade homes, warehouses, and the well. They completed the work of building the infrastructure so quickly that Izem estimated they would have a hundred thousand pounds of salt ready to go when he took the spring caravan.

They had even started small vegetable gardens by building an overhang covered with palm fronds between the roofs of each house. This would shade the garden plots from the worst of the desert sun.

When the men from the prototype sawmill felt ready, we proceeded to the next step. Each man took four sets of parts and a dozen extra blades, and each headed to different locations. All of them understood the importance of having extra trees planted to replace every tree that was cut down.

Cyprus, Lebanon, and Turkey each got one man to supervise the building and operation of two sawmills specializing in cedar. Two men went to locations along the Rhine River in Saxony to build sawmills for processing the abundant hardwood found in the forests there. One man went to each of our larger Iberian cities with a nearby river, one man to Paris to build and run two mills for Clovis, and another to Soissons. The man going to Soissons took two sets of molds with him, so they could cast parts for more sawmills. Five more men left with me when we sailed for Ghana.

One of our newest ships, the Paris, sailed directly for Bioko Island to found Port Tizemt. My wives conferred and felt that since the port was to facilitate trade with her homeland, it should be named after her. As long as they didn’t name it after me, I didn’t care and stayed out of the decision. The ship carried the agreed-upon purchase price (and extra in case the Bubi tried to renegotiate), as well as everything they needed to build a town, a port, and two sawmills. They would plant fields with sugar cane, cacao trees, banana trees, both types of oranges, lemons, and limes. They had plenty of troops with bows and mortars to defend themselves, if necessary.

They towed three of Odoacer’s repaired ships, one for the Bumi and two for their own use for fishing and trading with villages along the coast. They took a year’s supply of food, even though we would have ships there every three months. Ten slaves who spoke Bantu went as translators and were promised their freedom in four years instead of eight since their contribution would be so valuable. The group took several of the pavilion-style tents to live in while they built homes.

The Valencia carried the Tenerife settlers, and everything needed to build Port Audoflede and one of the new sawmills. Three of Odoacer’s repaired ships were towed, one for the Guanches and two for the colonists. Again, my wives decided the port’s name among themselves. Banana pups potted in clay pots went, along with potted citrus and sugar cane that they picked up from ports along the way. Twenty of the soldiers who made the overland trip to Koumbi and had learned to speak Berber went to act as translators. I warned them that the language was similar, but not exactly the same. Half of the fifty soldiers I sent would stay aboard the Valencia, just in case. My initial confrontation with the Guanches left me a little apprehensive. The soldiers would exchange positions every three days.

I sailed aboard the Montana, stopping at each of our ports along the Iberian coast to pick up grain, citrus, sugar, rum, bananas, and everything else that sold well. Surplus Roman weapons were aboard since the soldiers of the former Eastern Roman Empire now used our bows and Soissons steel swords. In addition, they sent us the weapons they had captured in battles with groups still struggling against us. The men to build the roads, the docks, and the five sawmills were aboard. Each man took two slaves purchased in Koumbi. Those slaves had learned enough Frankish to translate for them if necessary, although the men took a crash course in Soninke. Each of the men building a sawmill, roads, or docks had two of the locking metal boxes of explosives for blasting.

We stopped at Achinet for two days. I met with their King again and had him choose what he expected for payment. He chose Roman swords and spears, bolts of cotton cloth, salt, grain, and iron cookware. A bag of sugar, a bunch of bananas, and a hundred pounds of oranges were my gift to the King. I wanted him to taste what we would be growing there, hoping to convince him that our presence was a good thing. The town was laid out, the supplies and livestock were unloaded, and several loads of rocks had been collected by the time we left. Their King was a happy camper. I hoped he stayed that way.

Five days later, we arrived at Port Tizemt. Everything seemed to be progressing nicely. The Bumi were excited about the ship and Roman bows we left them last time. The bows made hunting a lot easier for them and the ship let them catch a lot more fish than their small boats. I left a bunch of bananas and a hundred pounds of citrus with them so they knew what we’d be growing there.

The next day, we began our trip upriver. This time, each of the six repaired ships we were towing had two harpoon guns aboard and a much shorter version of the harpoon designed specifically for the crocodiles. I wasn’t worried about hunting them to extinction since they had a broad range of habitat. I just wanted to make the Bambara River safer for the people who lived and worked along it.

We stopped at every city and medium or large village on our way upriver. We sold sugar, bananas, dried fruit, citrus, crocodile meat, and some of the other goods, but only if we got almost as good a price as we did at the end of the trip. Some people thought we charged too much, others were ecstatic with their purchases, especially the man who bought one of our plows. Along the way, Tizemt bought rice and millet if the price was low enough, along with anything else she knew we could sell at a profit later. For now, we eschewed buying slaves, promising to buy them on our way back downriver. Somehow, Tizemt kept track of each town and city offering to sell slaves.

When we stopped in Segou, one of King Reba’s men rushed towards Koumbi to let him know we would be arriving in Bamako in a couple of days. Another hurried to Bamako to warn them. Despite everything we sold along the way upriver, our holds were full when we reached Segou. Most of it was millet and rice, but Tizemt bought thousands of clay pottery pieces, and we were buying as much cotton as we could.

Seeing cotton available on our last trip, I built a screw press like a cider press, except it was bigger, kind of like a modern cardboard baler. We tossed loose cotton and hand-tied bundles of cotton into a compartment enclosed on all four sides. When the hopper was full, the screw press compressed the cotton.

With the cotton fully compressed, we pushed or hammered sharpened steel rods through a series of holes in the front and back of the compartment, right below the press. That held the cotton down, allowing us to add more cotton and to repeat the cycle. We pulled the steel rods out before compressing the cotton the next time and moved them up a notch or two each time the cotton was compressed. When the compartment was full, we tied the cotton bale with lengths of sturdy rope and lowered it into the hold with the winch we used to load and unload the ship. Our bales were about eight times the size of modern rectangular hay bales.

Bamako was chaotic upon our arrival, but the soldiers were ready for us. Someone quickly set up shade coverings along the waterfront. I told the men tasked with designing and building the docks here to take into consideration the informal marketplace that appeared when we docked, and to let the local commander approve their plans before starting.

Again, we unloaded horses and wagons first. We left a lot of both last time but needed even more for the extra cargo we brought this time. Aside from carrying the extra cargo, I wanted to leave extra wagons behind for the builders, the lumberjacks, and the sawmill. I did bring two men to build even more wagons since we’d had to reject several offers to buy a wagon while we were here the last time.

By the time we had several wagons filled with goods, we had to open for business! The people were that insistent. People were surprised at how much rice and millet we had this time, nearly four times as much as last time. We had purchased a third of it on our way upriver.

King Reba arrived the day before we were finished unloading. He spent an entire day aboard ship exploring. We tapered off unloading goods for sale and moved the informal marketplace so we could unload lumber, cement, equipment, and tools. Tizemt suggested the delay to give people from outlying areas time to get here to buy rice and millet from us rather than having to buy it at an inflated price from local merchants. I made a mental note to have some of our wagons take loads of rice, millet, and ironware to outlying villages, saving them having to walk here, buy things, and then having to carry everything on their backs when they returned.

On our last day of selling things, King Reba joined me as I rode out to check on the millrace. It was discouraging to see the millpond full of crocodiles. We’d need to find a way to keep them out of the millrace and millpond. Looking around, I guessed that we’d need to fence in the whole area, driving long ironwood stakes into the ground every foot or so to keep the crocs from digging under the fence. Then we’d have to install some kind of gate across the mouth of the millrace, like locks on a canal, for when we let trees float in. Even then, I was sure some crocodiles would get in.

We only saved a small amount of grain for the trip home, knowing we could buy more rice and millet downriver if we ended up with lots of slaves. Tizemt told everyone in Bamako who was interested, that we’d be back in about four weeks to buy slaves. Fifteen archers stayed aboard to watch the ship and the gold already aboard. Others would watch for crocodiles while the men worked at the site of our sawmill. I suggested that they pay some of the women in town to skin the crocs for them, and to sell any of the meat they didn’t want. I did want the hides, though. We still had thousands of troops who needed riding boots, and the crocodile hides were much more durable, not to mention prestigious, than regular leather.

We left four wagons behind but filled the others with goods for Koumbi. King Reba laughed and told me his wives warned him not to buy so much rum this time. I think he ate half of a bunch of bananas during the ten-day trip to Koumbi as we talked and laughed while our lengthy wagon caravan snaked along the dirt road.

While we were in Bamako, I had twenty of the empty wagons repacked, filling them with necessities. Partway to Koumbi, those wagons started peeling off from the main column with two of King Reba’s soldiers to guide them to some of the rural villages where they would sell their goods.

The people in Koumbi definitely expected us; the crowd in the marketplace the afternoon that we arrived was the biggest one I’d seen. Agreeing with my suggestion, King Reba announced that he wanted individuals to be allowed to go first to help reduce the number of people in the marketplace. Those buyers who had slaves with them should send most of them home or back to their campsite, keeping one to call the rest back to the marketplace if they were able to buy goods today. There was some grumbling from the wealthy buyers, but the individuals and families surged forward excitedly.

We allowed everyone to browse and check the quality of the grain and fruit while it was still light outside and continued to sell our goods by the light of torches late into the night. Even some of the wealthy buyers managed to buy goods before we finally called it a night.

The marketplace was again crowded in the morning, albeit a bit more controlled. King Reba had nearly a hundred of his slaves help us out since we were still exhausted. He had chosen what he wanted to buy while we were still in Bamako, and those wagons went directly to the palace grounds yesterday. This morning, the fruit was flying, as were the rum and sugar. By the next evening, nearly everything was gone. While we were busy selling, Tizemt bought all the pavilion tents she could find, and had them set up near the palace. Then she started filling them with slaves. She also contracted to have many more pavilions made for this and future trips.

Once King Reba and I settled our account, we headed southwest, overland. I warned him that we would be going near the original goldfields, but he waved off my warning. The road didn’t have as much traffic as the one from Bamako to Koumbi, and heavy rains the first two days turned it into a quagmire that we slogged through. I spent fourteen of the seventeen days trying to decide whether the mud or the desert was worse.

For two weeks after arriving in the small village of Kayes on the bank of the modern Senegal River, we rode through the jungle, visiting sites. I showed them where nine gold mines were, a second stretch of the Senegal River to pan for gold, two garnet mines, and eight kimberlite pipes, three of which had diamonds in them. Having no idea how much rough garnets and diamonds were worth, I promised to have Tizemt go with me when I had them evaluated. He told me that he trusted me to pay him a fair price. We spent a day at one of the kimberlite pipes digging so I could show him what they needed to look for. Finding nothing after four hours, I took the chance to demonstrate the gelignite to King Reba, leaving a five-foot crater. I kept digging while the men poked through the debris looking for anything resembling gravel. Then we spent half a day at one of the garnet mines, which was more productive. We pulled thirty small to medium garnets out, compared to only four small diamonds we found at the kimberlite pipe.

Thank God, the trip back to Koumbi was dry (nearly) and we made the return trip in ten days. I gave the stones to Tizemt to hang onto and crashed. She and Audoflede woke me the next morning before dawn, insisting on a good drilling. After breakfast, I discovered that everyone was packed and ready to leave. Audoflede and Tizemt had even bought leather goods to sell downriver and had the local leatherworkers make them boots from the crocodile hides while they waited for me. Audoflede teased me about the danger of leaving bored women alone with so much gold.

When I finally saw the number of slaves they managed to buy, I was dumbstruck. There were one hundred forty pavilions, each holding twenty-five people. I also found out that the market wagons had been a huge financial success for us and a political success for King Reba. The villagers were grateful for a king who would arrange something like that for them, and nobody tried to explain anything different. I thought it turned out just fine. Some of the slaves here now were ones my men managed to buy in the small, outlying villages.

I was stunned when we made it back to Bamako. I went to see how the sawmill was coming, and found the outside walls done. They’d built it so the main floor was ten feet off the ground, both to compensate for flooding, and to stay above the crocodiles. A sturdy raised catwalk went along each side of the millpond from the mill to the opening of the millrace. From the catwalk, one of the men could catch any log in the pond with a peavey (a sharply pointed grappling hook type of logging tool, attached to a long pole). He would guide the log along an extension of the pond that almost looked like another short millrace. Two chains were lowered until they reached the bottom of the extension. They floated the log over the chains, winched it up to the second level, and released it onto the steel-roller conveyor belt.

From there it would roll inside where they pushed it sideways onto an angled rack. When the log on the carriage was done being cut, the angled rack tilted and rolled the next log onto the carriage and the men secured it. I was impressed and told them so. I also noticed a distinct dearth of crocodiles in the area. They laughed and explained that they helped the soldiers by loading them into the wagons using a block and tackle. I almost choked when they told me they’d killed two hundred twenty-three crocodiles. It seems that, once they got the hides, tails, and much of the other available meat, they left the rest of the carcasses along the riverbank. That attracted more and more crocodiles. Only when they were down to two or three a day did they begin pushing the remaining rotting carcasses into the river to get rid of them.

They traded most of the meat to the women for skinning the crocodiles instead of paying them with gold. The women were excited to get the meat for their families and sold any extra in the market. As a bonus for the job they did, I told the men I would pay for each of them to have a pair of crocodile skin boots made and left the money with the supervisor. The drawback was that they had to kill more crocodiles, but I was certain there would be plenty more.

Audoflede seemed to have picked up quite a bit of the Soninke language and joined Tizemt in her daily forays into the marketplace. By now, both women were well recognized, drawing a daily crowd of people hoping to sell slaves. I didn’t even want to know how many they bought, but the Montana was nearly full when we finally left. The women also bought more pavilions as well as inexpensive, locally grown meat and produce. All the way down the river, our crocodile hunting continued. With so many people aboard, nobody had a chance to get tired of crocodile meat. We actually killed fewer going back, than on the trip upriver, mainly due to not having the smaller boats trailing behind us that we had used to hunt the crocodiles. Those boats remained in Bamako for the lumberjacks to use for guiding logs downriver to our sawmill. We left the harpoon guns in each boat for them to use.

Tizemt reminded us of each village and town where we had promised to stop to buy more slaves. We also bought more millet, rice, meat, fish, and vegetables to help feed everyone aboard. She sold off some of the leather goods and other goods she bought in Bamako and Koumbi, but was saving most of them to sell in Mediterranean ports.

After finally reaching the ocean, the crocodile hunters became fishermen, dropping nets from the stern. The nets had floats made by laminating layers of cork together with glue. Small lead weights were attached along the bottom of the net. After fifteen minutes, they raised the net using the cargo boom on the rear mast. That one fifteen-foot-by-thirty-foot net caught up to two or three hundred pounds of fish--or none if there weren’t any in the area. We trained some of the slaves to use the nets to fish; they kept fishing and training other slaves the entire trip home. The women pitched in by preparing and cooking the fish. On the entire trip home, I don’t think I ate the same type of fish more than once. If I did, it was prepared differently each time.

We stopped by Port Tizemt to make sure everything was going well. It was. Racks of drying fish littered the beach where the Bubi ship was tied up. The Bubi women were excitedly showing me how many fish their men caught with the new boat and the nets we gave them. They’d found a use for the “worthless” salt: drying and preserving fish. I also noticed several of the Bubi men working in our village helping to build the wall that would surround it. We left them to their new lives, needing to get back to ours.