Plans of the Deathless Gods

By John Strang

BOOK SUMMARY

Plans of the Deathless Gods.

The time: the seven years (1785-1792) before the breakup of European order instigated by the French Revolution.

The scene: Prussia, South Africa, New Zealand.

The characters: Curt Christoph von Allmen, who proposes the plan of a New Zealand sealing station as medium of commerce with China; his twin sister Maria, who composes an epic poem to commemorate its founding; their friend, philosopher Adam Sixtus lEstrange, whose ruminations on the times issue in a surprising discovery.

The plot: Curt Christoph, a philhellene, envisions New Zealand as the scene of a restored Apollonianismwhich his sisters epic playfully portrays, and Adam Sixtus philosophical discovery ironically supports.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 12, 2003
• ISBN: 9781493199969

John Strang

John Strang now finds himself "a consumer--rather than a producer of Nutshells." He is currently a diagnostic radiologist (MD) at Stanford University. He is married to a pediatrician, Susie, and they have two children, Katie and Alex. John enjoys hiking, bicycling, and dabbling in other sciences. He plans to use his experience as an author at ORA to write his own book on radiology.

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Copyright © 2002 by John Strang.

Cover photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Appendix

Dedicated to the Memory of my Brother,

Robert E. Strang, August 4, 1930-June 7, 1972

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CHAPTER ONE

From their cramped places in the pit the musicians endured the final assembly of the actors. With their outfits there were too many of them to fit the stage at once: for apart from babes in arms and mere toddlers the cast included every single child in the settlement. Diminutive soldiery: a Briton in red coat, a Frenchman in white, a squad of Prussians in sober blue. One of the Prussians—an NCO, obviously—sported a severe black mustache. Little black Africans: our Maoris did quite well for that part. Rough seamen in striped shirts and kerchiefs. Sea-monsters. A cute water-puppy. A hideous mangy Tityos. Animals. Zebra. Hartebeest. Oryx. Gnu. They passed in review. Then the next contingent.

Constellations. Some easy to identify, such as the Dog or the Crow, others, like Volans, requiring the addition of name tags sewn onto their robes. There was a troop of native boys, dark and as nearly naked as decency would allow, wielding their toothed clubs, and opposite them, a troop of Hyperboreans, each one a blond, equally unclothed, and bearing a spear. There were bevies of servants to the deities.

Then came the leading characters, the gods. These children were older, and hence taller, as befitted gods. Artemis, in short skirt of hunter green, a quiver slung on her back and carrying toy bow and arrows. Apollo, golden crown on his head, lyre in hand, standing midway between the Hyperboreans and the Savages. A sooty Hephaistos in a cameo role. And the Muse. A little golden muse, her long hair flowing down a white silk dress broken at her bosom by a broad black satin swath. The story would begin with her.

Lepus, adjust Musca’s right wing, it is about to fall off again. Yes, Madame Gouverneur. Don’t forget, Constellations, be mindful of your trailing robes, and be heedful of Hydra’s many heads. Yes, Madame Gouverneur. One last look about. Very well, it may begin—to your places, children. All the children shuffled into the wings, except the Muse, who took her post at center stage, and Apollo and Artemis, at extreme right.

The backdrop for the opening scene was a great curtain depicting a blue sky and bank upon bank of fluffy clouds—Olympus—and hovering dead center (but out of sight) a great yellow rayed sun that would be lowered behind Apollo as he approached center stage. Kapellmeister Waitz had selected music for the epic mostly drawn from Gluck’s two Iphigenias, and to announce the entry of the Muse—and commencement of the whole work—he chose the two or three fortissimo tenuto measures that preceded the Aulis overture’s principal theme. A nod to the orchestra: a confident C major that snapped the audience to attention. Again. Again. The curtain rose majestically.

"Sing out in us, sweet Prussian muse,

How forth on bright and gusty winter morn

There sailed the huntress-goddess Artemis

And sibling Apollo, seventh-month son

Of god and woman mortal-born,

Questing seas beyond the Betelgeuse!"

From his seat in the bassoon section (in fact he was the bassoon section), Adam Sixtus was ill-placed to observe any of the action on the stage. But he knew the poem by heart, as if he and not his sister-in-law had been its creator. If he were a poet. The images of the founding voyage poured forth—

" . . . passed along the fragrant Africk shore, . . .

Scudding… southward, past the Moor-

Land, and the country of the Niger blacks…"

—aiming for the Cape of Good Hope: th’ Orient’s door! Little Africans scurried off to be replaced by boys portraying Portuguese, French, Dutch and British sailors. In turn each cast head down and walked off as the poem related:

" . . . No longer thine alone—poor Portugee,

Imperious France, crabbed Holland, thee

Rude Brit! . . ."

Now a cheer from the audience: the Prussian crew was making its entrance. Make way! Make way, I say!—The twin vessels, Artemis in the bow of one, Apollo in the other, with crew, officers and large black-eagle flags flowing astern, made their way to center stage. The epic continued—

"Past ninety days hard sailing stood

The welcome Table’s image ‘fore edacious eyes!"

Kapellmeister Waitz raised his hand, the storm was about to strike—

"But ere the darling sibling gods

Should down maw’s prize

Needs must Artemis ‘lone have trial sent!"

A fortissimo chord of torrent-music from the pit. Kettle-drums, cymbals, triangle, rolling arpeggios of increasing strength, as the aula plunged into darkness—screeches from stage and audience alike—, flashes of lightning, booming tympani of thunder. Dim stage lights appeared to withdrawn curtains and revealed a single vessel rocking in heavy undulating seas, the Table far off in the distance. Sea creatures began to be seen peeking from the wooden waves—

"Who was it put our goddess to such pain?

. . . Some jealous Nereid… ?

. . . Or maybe th’ Aegean One himself? . . ."

No, anticipated Adam Sixtus to himself, it was Tityos. Why had Maria chosen this obscure mythical monster as the villain of her epic? He had once asked the poetess. It went back to her and Curt Christoph’s childhood. Their mother was reading to them from Ovid, about how Tityos attacked the gods’ mother, Leto, and how Apollo and Artemis destroyed the monster with a shower of arrows. It had made a great impression on them—she and Curt Christoph themselves being twins—so it was natural to include Tityos in the Novo-Borussiad. And a hideous creature he was, too, young Rohdau. One of the tallest boys, hair all unkempt and wearing a greasy coat of shredded fur seal skin flecked with gore, uglier than the worst Maori mat. Adam had thought a Maori mat would serve, but he was wrong, as he had to admit when he saw young Rohdau. But Maria was mistaken about the source: it was Apollodorus, not Ovid. Pindar’s Fourth Pythian also makes a reference, the one with the line, that men might learn to yearn for things within their reach.

The monster bobbed up and down, grimacing at Artemis and her terrified crew. But the goddess was unafraid: she glared right back at gory Rohdau. Ahhs and ohhs through the audience. Lights dimmed, curtains drawn again. Kapellmeister brought them a suggestion of Che puro ciel as curtains opened to reveal Apollo lounging in sunny South Africa—a signpost said Kapstadt—with Prussians uncharacteristically slouched about him in total undiscipline, all swigging from cheery little mugs. Now where was Artemis?

" . . . After full ten days,

Artemis, jarred and harried by the winds,

Her dresses drooping, her clean shrouds cut up,

Limped into harbor . . ."

Curt Christoph said it was seven days, but ten scanned better. —Now Apollo was inquiring of his sister after the monster thou hast fished from this rude cup—or did it get away? Apollo—he was the Gouverneur’s young aide—was doing quite well, the audience laughing approvingly as Artemis and her crew dried themselves off, and the stage was about to be set for the hunt scene:

(Apollo to Artemis:) "You catch for us some bouncing Africk deer,

Some fleet gazelle so light of hoof,

Some one or two of those strange stripèd horse

That bark instead of neigh,

And after meal of such course, . . ."

After meal of such course, Apollo would relate to his sister the purpose of this voyage, this improbable voyage, of a pair of Prussian trading vessels to—of all places—New Zealand, in the last year of the reign of Frederick the Great, 1786. —Kapellmeister signaled the horns, Stutz and Taylor: the opening Allegro from a Stamitz parthia—. Adam knew Maria got the material for this part of the epic from the letters Robert had sent her from Capetown on that first voyage. It was the last word she was to have from her husband until Apollon’s return to Königsberg in 1788. —Perfect hunt music, this!— Robert had spent the time while Artemis was undergoing repairs by taking a hunting trek into the veld with a party of Dutch Company men and some of his own as bearers. They brought down specimens of all the quadrupeds Maria introduced into the poem, and some others besides, like the bluebuck, whose skin Robert had made into a saddle-blanket for Dankwart. —The chasse allegro quickly over, dozens of little feet pattered stage left: the bevies of servants to accompany Artemis.

"So strode she forth across the evening plain

—New world all brash and glossy beasts all game

To sport their colors, test their skills!

Asked she: Which of these strange

Wry-hornèd deer may

It first be who’ll race my quill?"

An oryx first. But Artemis would pass it by because it was suckling young (just this incident had happened to Robert). But later—

" . . . She spotted herds of white-tailed gnu,

Of hartebeest and fleet gazelle.

Therein dispersed as well

Were quagga-bucks and zebra…"

The arrows flew from Artemis’ bow. One flew into the lap of an astonished Christian Daughter in the fourth row, another into the ‘cello case.

"Then came there down

Roan beast, black-white and brown,

Black blood steaming all about,

Horn, hoof, belly hurtling to ground!"

A whiff of roast something from off-stage. This was Madame Boileau-Pauli’s idea, to have the aroma of roasting game intensify Maria’s poetic images. A good idea Adam Sixtus conceded to himself: though never to Madame Boileau-Pauli (she was his nemesis; he hers). But surely the cook was early? They were only at the place where

" . . . Artemis’ accompanying train of

Sixty nymphs and demi-gods

Appeared, to porter all the beeves

And loins unto that charmèd spot

Where on the grass

Apollo lounged and waited."

The orchestra, the first, then also the second row of audience sniffed the air. Onion. Sage. Wildboar? Stage lights dimmed again, night fell, a little flickering torch here and there. Behind and above Adam Sixtus and the orchestra little porters were assembling the products of the hunt while little cooks sharpened knives and set up tripods over fires. At the dark edges gathered Constellations… . Rosemary! Venison? And something else, too…

"And busily some set to work

With flaying tools and cutting knives

While others gathered from the plain

Sweet-smelling woods for cooking fires.

Hephaistos then

From far demesne

Dispatched a swift mechanickal

With searing flame

To set the pyre"

—Here a boy bearing a brighter torch ran a zig-zag diagonal across the stage—

"Through southern sky sidereal,

Past Corvus, Hydra, Centaur

—On to Mensa flew

The skipping blue-green meteor!"

This part of the canto recorded an astronomical event Robert and his party had witnessed that night on the veld. Understandably, Robert wrote, all the men there took it as a good omen for the voyage.

"The timbers sparked

The wood consumed,

And over sanderac brazier…"

Yes, it was all in the letter. The hunt, the cooking fires, the nighttime feast under the stars. The meteor. The lounging Hyperboreans, that is to say Prussians. Well, not sanderac braziers, perhaps.

Now Artemis was devising the seasonings—

"Say pepper, onion, garlic, sage

—These must the wildebeest engage

In noble, sensate intercourse!

And juniper, whole peppercorns,

Were better for the stripèd horse!

That left the tender hartebeest,

The swift gazelle.

‘What’s best for these?’"

Juniper! That’s it! How did we get any juniper here? Have to ask Memmling about that. It would be amusing, reflected Adam Sixtus, to know whether these condiments went together. He had eaten hartebeest—or was it wildebeest?—but those frumpy Boer women, what did they know of proper spices? He caught himself: I have changed. Not too many years ago I was indifferent to sensory taste. Now it is true I enjoy a good meal. No matter, I’m a philosopher still. Though now I do eat better. He remembered a terrible garret meal in Halle many years before.

" . . . For that lyre-hornèd one;

And for the tenderest of all,

Our fleet gazelle—choose tarragon!"

The entire aula was veritably salivating now. The cook had said it was a perfect waste—she didn’t know how Excellency could countenance it!—but Maria chided her that it was the rarest of celebrations, and deserved the rarest of feasts. Not too rare, begging Madame Gouverneur’s pardon, I won’t have them children tracking blood all around my clean kitchen, nor the aula neither! But the piece had moved on. Apollo was telling the assembled constellations the purpose of the gods’ visit to the southern hemisphere:

"We bring here in our golden train

One hundred forty brave young men:

Warriors, officers, sailors, and

Noble commanding gentlemen.

Prussians from the Baltick Sea,

Blond and hyperborean."

Well, but few of them were blond, really. Curt Christoph, of course. And his troop. But, yes, they were mostly young. Robert himself was one of the oldest, and he was only thirty-five. Most were much younger. Curt Christoph would have been, what, twenty-eight? And there were one hundred forty, at least to begin with. But only one hundred thirty-nine made it to Fridericus. The pastor—that first pastor—didn’t survive the Roaring Forties. And cannibals got the second one. Now we’re on our third. Fiebelmann. Poor Fiebelmann. Poor feeble man.

"Here, then’s, the Whence:

From gray north German plain

And Baltick Sea: the modest scene

Of ripening humanity.

And here’s the Why:

That dark zone might emerge

Into harmonious light

Through noble gift from Königsberg!"

This was Maria’s gesture, it was likely, to Adam Sixtus himself: he it was who had instructed his sister-in-law on the grave significance of the Critical Philosophy for the world—not just the Prussian environs, but the whole wide world. Far more than Hamann, more than Herder: Dr. Kant. Wherever man had reason—and that was everywhere—Dr. Kant’s philosophy would find a home.

" . . . harmonious light

Through noble gift from Königsberg!

—‘What?’ broke rude Centaur then, ‘Klopse’?"

This was the touchiest part: Centaur was made up of two boys and had come apart at the waist twice in dress rehearsal. Alertness in the orchestra, expecting the worst and looking cautiously at the front row of the audience. Laughter. But at Königsberger Klopse, the familiar meat ball recipe, just as Maria had intended the allusion. Not laughter at the splitting seam of Centaur.

"No, glared the god, Philosophy!

A treasure quite unknown to thee,

Inedible, not subject to a rape or fright!"

Adam Sixtus now had to admit that the prospect of a Maori Kantian was pretty dim: it was all he could do to get the very best of them to parse a mi-verb. Perhaps Curt Christoph would have more success through his feldjägers. His men worshipped him—both light and dark—though Curt Christoph is of course no follower of Immanuel Kant. Indeed, he is not quite a philosopher at all, though there is something about him—the affect he has… —Weren’t they nearing the adagio now? Adam Sixtus listened. No. The constellations were hearkening together—

"Apus whirred, and Musca buzzed,

Lepus hopped and Canis barked,

Marveling great Zeus’ intent!

That stars might be collaborate

In furthering mortal cause

Now struck them as divinely quaint!"

It was Maria’s happy idea to have the constellations rival one another in a contest to see which one would bless this Prussian enterprise. It would be eventually resolved by Libra’s weighing up the claims. The orchestra played briefly there again.

"Grus did crane, and Corvus cawed:

‘Me! Me!’ they cried conjoinedly!

The others mocked, ‘Naw! Naw!’"

Adam was thinking of his recent journey to the interior camp—the forbidden zone, that male military sanctuary. That curious institution of Curt Christoph’s. —But the kapellmeister was raising his oboe.

"‘Halt! Quiet!’ solemn Libra spoke:

‘Let me weigh up the question!

It’s my proper job, you know!’

The stars agreed and placidly

Resumed an ethereal adagio…"

The adagio had relatively little to occupy the bassoon, and Adam resumed his reminiscence of the feldjäger encampment. Little as he knew of armed force, Adam Sixtus thought there was no army on the face of the earth quite like that one. None now. In ancient, very ancient, Greece, perhaps. —Libra weighed in favor of Crux. This was Maria’s nod to Fiebelmann.

"Now stellar eyes returned

Unto the youthful golden god.

Constellations asked aloud,

‘Just where’s this hemispheric port?

Where is this tiny navy bound?’"

Here the Novo-Borussiad dwelled on the remarkable similarity-in-difference of this South Island to the home country:

"As shall recall a place they know—

With sparkling streams and leaping fish,

With comely trees and pines that grow

Two hundred feet in air or so!"

That was an exaggeration. He knew of no tree in either place that was quite that tall. Perhaps, however, Curt Christoph did know of some—what, kauries? He should have to ask him.

"With forests dense and gloomy swamps!

With whistling winds and winter damps!"

Ah, yes, that was true. Too true. Whistling winter winds straight from the pole—whistling winds that got right into bed with you, through your deepest goosefeather covers!

"With some familiar plants about—

As flax—and fish—as lobsters, trout—"

Grayling, really. Prototroctes. But very like trout. And the flax, why of course, as good as Silesia’s. Better!

"That in this distant alien clime

Not all may seem so foreign but sprout

Some memory in the longing mind

Of northern European home,

Twelve thousand miles away or so!"

Twelve thousand miles away. A dozen years away. A world war away. Who would have thought that a journey out here for the sake of my brother and natural philosophy would come to this! And of course it isn’t over yet—just begun. What we have come through—what we have to come through yet. The epic above and behind him recounted the differences in the similarities, the similarities in the differences.

" . . . in July shall here fall snow!

And in December flowers grow!

October shall be April here!

In May shall autumn leaves appear!"

Adam Sixtus twitched slightly at the recognition of a fact that he was probably the last in this aula to discern: But of course this is our country now! These children up there, they know and never have known any other country. To them, April is my old October. His mind moved on to a different reflection within this one, the topic of past, but undiscussed, philosophical concerns: Their beginning is my end. —We used to think, my brother and I, how could we ever make the return—at the outset of the Great Interruption, then—how could we do it, with these seizures at sea and wars on land? But now, and long since, it is a different question entirely. Adam looked up at the middle of the darkened balcony at the very rear of the aula, the place where his brother, the Gouverneur, sat with those of his sons who could be compelled to attend this, their mother’s, epic of the founding of the settlement. How, brother, could we bring these children to return? They are no longer Prussians in your sense or mine—they are new Prussians. His mind gravitated back to the epic unfolding on the stage behind him. It was now recounting two minor errors in Captain Cook’s otherwise superbly accurate map that guided Apollon and Artemis in ’86: the misidentification of Banks’ Land as an island, and of the South Island’s own south island as a peninsula—

"Here isle is peninsular,

Connected to the massy land;

Peninsula is insular,

Divided by a watery span!

Here up is down, and down is up!

South means cold

And North means hot!"

And how did those little actors see the irony of that? Probably didn’t, don’t. South does mean cold, north does mean hot: to them. It seemed amusingly contradictory enough when Maria first recited it to me, back there in Königsberg, in the Kneiphof. —But we move to Apollo’s wager—is wager the right word?

"Stars: Hearken now!

This is the plan:

This island-stage shall be the scene

Of test of rationality!

A calculus for mortal man!"

Another of Maria’s gestures to philosophy. I think. Or is it perhaps to her twin brother? This island stage. This stage of little actors, light and dark. And why am I thinking that Curt Christoph may be the intended tester of this calculus? And if so, it is ironic that he who alone can test the calculus does so, yes, with both the races: but with only one of the sexes. Adam softly blew the water out from his bassoon. Apart from the Tauris’s Scythian March he would have nothing to play until the very end. But the march was up soon.

"For nothing more

Shall test mind’s sights

Than meeting with these seeming-men,

These naked anthropophagites!"

Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! The heavy and percussive janissary music of Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris served equally well for any barbarians—Turk, Scythian, or Maori. Before the march was finished the stage had filled. Cannibals were to the left, Hyperboreans to the right, Apollo between the two troops.

"So shared hot-blooded manliness

Might thus permit

Two so seeming different kinds

—Hyper-, hypo-boreans—

By mutual and armed respect

To recognize a common mind

Through otherwordly difference!"

That certainly sounds as though Maria had Curt Christoph in mind, but how could she have anticipated the future form of the Corps of Feldjägers—that body of hosts—and strangers? Unless it was perhaps the twin’s empathy? Or maybe she had Robert himself in mind, for he was—is—overall commander. But what of all those references—his mind returned to past lines, Philosophy’s for mortals born/Where’er they’re born!/Not merely hyperboreans!— . . . Well, I don’t know, and I don’t know Maria herself knows. Perhaps she had an amalgam of all of us in her muse’s mind. Adam again blew out his instrument, as a noble, stately sarabande—for strings alone—broke in upon his musings. And then Aquarius appeared to remind Apollo of that most hoary of myths, the Noble Savage. Might not the natives have a thing or two to teach Enlightenment Man? Maria prudently had Apollo demur:

" . . . Let us see

What sort of noble manhood

Lies hidden in true savagery!"

It was a savagery he, though not Maria or the other ladies, or these children, had had some glimpse of. Not so much a glimpse by any means as the Gouverneur. And none there had a fraction so much as Curt Christoph. But Adam Sixtus determined not to think further on the interior encampment and the feldjägers, on Curt Christoph, on who precisely was intended, or who inspired, or who was embodied in these personae, these little epic personae playing out this story above and behind him. He took his reed from its case and wetted it again in preparation for the musical conclusion. Adam Sixtus—the Magister, as he was known to everyone in New Prussia, even his brother, his family—magisterially detached himself from his reflections and fixed his mind and ear, together with the here nearly entire assembled population of Fridericus, to every word as the epic drew to its conclusion. Or as Apollo has it, to its beginning:

"Now’s the time, here’s the key:

To fix the common ground

For test of diametric Mind

—Blond, white, and ordered;

Black, dark, and unrefined—

The selfsame wooded, watered spot—

Who shall teach whom?

We sail that we may find!

Now, constellations, sound

A stellar summoning call, and shine

Forth, Southern Crux,

A guiding beacon light!

While sister Artemis and I

Assemble all our troops!

This healthy breathing space,

As we ourselves have done,

Our men have put to use:

Accounting unto stars why they are bound

To quest the seas beyond the Betelgeuse!"

And Kapellmeister Stefan Waitz, in an aula delirious with the noise and applause of row on row of beaming parents, and because his voice could not have been heard even by those closest to him in the orchestra, held up the fingers of both hands to his fellow musicians—once, a second time, minus one finger: Measure 19 of the Iphigenia in Aulis. The same arresting C major. Again. Again. And the overture began.

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CHAPTER TWO

In the late spring of 1785 there arrived in the port of Emden in northwestern Germany the merchant ship Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, a vessel of the Prussian-Asiatic Trading Company, homeward bound from a journey to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies.

Aboard this ship were two young men, friends from childhood, who now made their way together to their respective homes on the Baltic: Max Rohdau, fourth lieutenant of the Prinz, who was traveling on to Pillau, and Curt Christoph von Allmen, who had served in the somewhat exceptional capacity of councillor aboard ship, and who was bound for Danzig.

Max Rohdau’s role aboard the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm was as uncomplicated as his modest affable person: he was a junior officer taken on board on the basis of nearly a dozen years’ experience sailing in his father’s trading ships in the Baltic and beyond, to Amsterdam, London, the Atlantic coast of France, Cadiz, and even the Bay of Naples. This, however, had been his first voyage to the Indies, and he returned gratified by the profits in which he had shared, the experience of the Orient—and not least the fact that he, and his friend, had survived the fetid airs of Batavia: no friend of sailors.

Curt Christoph’s place on the ship was harder to account for: he did not sail as officer, nor seaman, nor quite as supercargo either for he had this odd official designation: Councillor. Or to give him his full title: His Excellency Councillor Baron von Allmen. And this was doubly odd, for while his father, Johann, was indeed a Danzig city councillor, Curt Christoph was not. And neither one was a baron.

Their fathers it was who had arranged this journey of their sons, and as the two young men were both about twenty-five when they departed in 1783, the opportunity so to shape their sons’ destinies somewhat was perhaps the last one these fathers would know (though fathers being what they are, do they ever quite let go?). For it is often the case that at about this time in a young man’s life some crisis occurs or some threshold must be crossed: and after this time things are never quite the same again. In Max’s case it was a threshold. Ewald, his father, had long hoped to retrieve the seafaring life of his own youth. He had been to the Orient himself, over thirty years before, and he always remembered the dazzling profits to be had, the exotic sights and sounds, the dangers so appealing to the young. But as he grew older, Ewald especially remembered the dazzling profits to be had. And this is the reason he arranged for his son’s appointment as fourth lieutenant of the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm.

In Curt Christoph’s case it was a crisis. In the summer of 1783 he had returned to his father’s residence—a palais it was called—in a state of profound dejection, extreme melancholia. It was not unusual for him. Even as an adolescent he had suffered melancholy. As a fourteen year old, following his mother’s untimely death; again as a scholar at Göttingen, not yet twenty; and again four years later when he’d finished his university studies. But each time his melancholy was cured by a father’s gift: a journey to the Mediterranean, a flight into the healing sun, to his mother’s home (she was a Neapolitan lady). After a time, he would reappear at his father’s house, golden and beaming and alive with ideas. But not the last time.

The despairing emptiness struck him there: in the Mediterranean—not in Naples, but in Greece. In Hellas, the Turks’ Hellas, klephtic Hellas. Enamored of the pagan gods, he went there looking—well, looking for Apollo. But he found emptiness. Somehow he had returned to Germany, his Wanderjahre over he thought, and knocked again on his father’s door.

Although Johann von Allmen rarely mentioned money to his son and although, as a patrician, he and his were somewhat cushioned against bad times, it is likewise true that the prospect of future commercial success played a role in father von Allmen’s calculations, as it had with father Rohdau. Indeed, in his case there was greater urgency. For Danzig, nominally an independent city-state, was undergoing a process of slow economic strangulation since 1772 when the First Partition of Poland took place and Prussia acquired Danzig’s hinterland, its access to Poland, and effective control of its harbor through the imposition of an admiralty court. Ordinary Danzigers hated Frederick the Great’s Prussia. They surmised that the king had left them nominally free in the expectation that they, seeing the futility of continued independence on these terms, would petition him for incorporation into the Prussian state. We’ll see you dead first! they vowed. Patrician Danzigers, as the years wore on, took a different view: and some of them had put out discreet feelers—and more—to Prussian business interests in Königsberg. Johann, who kept his politics to himself, was heard to say in a rare moment that there was raw justice here: in its heyday, Danzig had taken advantage of a backward, depressed Prussia. Now the tables were turned.

Johann had not so presented it to his son. It was difficult to present much of anything to his son given Curt Christoph’s disordered state in August, 1783. Johann reasoned that hitherto journeys to the south had helped: Ewald Rohdau had informed him of Max’s impending trip to the Orient—by way of the very far south—and Johann and Ewald took things from there. It is not quite clear how Johann managed the details, but he was always a bit of a magician in such matters, and Curt Christoph was taken on by the Prussian-Asiatic Trading Company with no other responsibility than to present himself as noble traveling emissary to the turgid Dutch Company authorities in Capetown and Batavia. Very proud patricians indeed, these worthies scarcely deigned to speak to most visiting ship captains—and charged the most outrageous prices for shoddy stocks, timbers, animals—but opened up precisely to the rare noble visitor as haughty, unsmiling, and taciturn as themselves. And those days Curt Christoph was nothing if not unsmiling and taciturn. As for aloofness, why, if he hadn’t found Apollo, he did have an apollonian distance and severity.

But the Curt Christoph who now made his way down the Langgasse, through the Langemarkt, past the Rathaus, and to the front door of the von Allmen Palais was no longer unsmiling. And not so taciturn either. On being announced, he bounded up the ancient stairs to greet his father’s outstretched arms and said, Father, I have an idea! And Johann von Allmen answered, Yes, Curt Christoph, somehow I hoped you might.

Now this idea—and for the very first time in Curt Christoph’s life—was a commercial idea. And thereon hangs our tale.

For when father von Allmen had heard out his son’s idea, he sat down and wrote a letter to father Rohdau in Pillau. And father Rohdau wrote a letter to Herr Erdmann, a highly placed banker in Königsberg. And both fathers wrote letters to Freiherr Carl Dietrich l’Estrange, a real baron, and incidentally the father-in-law of Curt Christoph’s twin sister, Maria, at his estate on the Pregel River outside Königsberg. A meeting of what was later known as the Four Families was arranged to begin there on July 17, 1785.

*     *     *

Let us look at the map, said Curt Christoph, as he unrolled and pinioned the corners of a large CHART OF THE WORLD According to G. Mercator’s Projection, shewing the latest Discoveries of Capt. COOK, a presentation from his father for this occasion. "Here is Canton. Here Danzig and Prussia. The shortest physical distance between Canton and us would of course be through Russia. So. But clearly the shortest distance in that sense would make economic nonsense. The route taken by the Dutch and by the Trading Company based in Emden is by way of the Cape of Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Dutch Batavia. It is quickest by sea.

But consider its drawbacks. First, it leads directly through the territories of the Dutch, whom we must pay for our commerce. Secondly, it is dangerous—notorious pirates here—he pointed to the Straits and Cochin China—and Batavia itself is the unhealthiest port in Asia. The great fear that any captain and crew have is that they will be delayed in Batavia. For each added day there means a sailor’s death somewhere down the line. The hardest thing is that they usually come after you’ve left port and think yourself safe on your way home. It happened even with the great Cook, whose crews were always otherwise healthy. Ewald Rohdau puffed a great cloud of smoke and nodded vigorously in agreement.

But in fact, continued Curt Christoph, the greatest—he corrected himself—the most lucrative trade is not with Batavia itself. It’s with Canton. Batavia one must pass through to get to Canton. Canton has excellent porcelain ware, silk goods, tea, spices, raw silk. Even if there is difficulty trading some of these goods—because of the Prussian State Bank’s monopoly—there is such a choice available there cheaply that we could pick and choose and still make a solid profit. How odd it was to hear the word profit fall from Curt Christoph’s lips: how deliciously these assembled gentlemen heard it!

Take raw silk, for instance. Prussia never has enough of it, so its silk manufactures are always running irregularly. We could always bring in raw silk. The authorities would welcome it.

The banker Herr Erdmann broke in: What do you propose to trade to the Cantonese, Herr von Allmen, assuming you got there? Manufactured goods? We understand they do not much care for them! All they seem to like is silver!

Curt Christoph was aware of the accuracy of Herr Erdmann’s objection. He nodded gravely in the banker’s direction, smiled,

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and continued—Perhaps the gentlemen are not aware of the recent fortunes of the fur trade in Russian America? You know, I am sure, that the Russians in their North American possessions have for years earned a fortune by trading furs with the mandarins. But do you know that the principal fur-bearing animal in this commerce, the sea otter, has been hunted nearly to extinction? Recently the Russians have been unable to bring in otter skins in numbers. Yet the mandarins offer fortunes for them!

Have you discovered some new source of these otters, Curt Christoph? asked Carl Dietrich.

"No, Excellency. But I was about to add that the mandarins will also accept sea bear skins—the furred seal. They’re not so welcomed as the sea otters but the Chinese will pay well enough for them if they can obtain nothing else for their robes." Ewald Rohdau puffed contentedly, nodding, Go on, go on.

Well, if the mandarins will pay well for sea bear pelts, prepared or raw, then such pelts would be a source of trade. And the point is that such pelts may be obtained on the way to China. One does not need to go all the way to America to find fur seals!

Curt Christoph raised his forefinger and held it hovering over the map—the eyes of those assembled followed it expecting to be shown some island in those tropical seas rich with the fur seal. It seemed improbable—they were cold weather animals, weren’t they? He left them in suspense. Look at the map again. Look at the usual Far East route again. Through the Indian Ocean with the trades, to Batavia, thence through the China Sea, and on to Canton. And back the same way. You know the advantages to the route: it is the shortest by sea. —And the disadvantages: it is largely through Dutch East Indies Company territory. The nearby islands are infested with pirates. It is very unhealthy and most voyages sustain heavy losses, particularly if one tarries too long. But commerce and the winds being what they are, one can never be sure that a long stay, even in Batavia, will be ruled out. The ship may need repairs. Weather may compel a stop. Lack of goods or foodstuffs. The assembled merchants seemed to be affected by the relation. They looked somewhat pale, thinking of fetid Batavia. Or was it Ewald Rohdau’s meerschaum?

But suppose this, Curt Christoph continued. Suppose we had a means of reducing by one-half the chance of disease which accompanies passage through Batavia. And suppose we had a station on the route to Canton which was not on Dutch, or French, or English, or Portuguese, or Spanish territory, but was on our own. And finally, suppose that this station was on an island that abounded in untouched herds of sea bears!

Curt Christoph certainly seemed to have metamorphosed from starry-eyed philhellene to budding merchant prince: the prospect of acquiring the source of profitable commerce with the Chinese merely through the labor of killing and skinning fur seals was pleasing to these men. It dispatched two beasts with one club, it might be said, for it offered your client a commodity you knew he wanted and wanted well—and it only involved the labor of getting it. And any Baltic port ruffian could dispatch a fur seal! Still, Johann must have known that the hardest part of his son’s sell lay ahead of him.

"We agreed earlier that the shortest physical route—in our case, overland through Russia and Siberia—is not necessarily the best one. Well, perhaps the shortest oceanic route—the one through Batavia—is also not the best one. If Batavia is unhealthy, costly, and in the control of middlemen, why not consider avoiding the Indian Ocean and Batavia altogether? Or, at most, why not pass through it on just one leg of the journey rather than both? Such an alteration, if it could be accomplished, would cut by one-half the chances of misfortune which accompany the Batavia passage.

Furthermore, the normal outbound journey makes sense primarily to those merchants who are compelled by considerations of time to be on the scene and as quickly back. Curt Christoph immediately realized that this was not well put: so did at least one of his auditors.

So, Herr von Allmen, bristled the banker, you do not think that need apply to us?

It may be more critical on the return trip, Herr Erdmann, if we are able indeed to acquire the export commodity for free on the outbound journey.

I see. Proceed.

Curt Christoph took a breath and began his summation: Gentlemen, what I propose is the following: An alternative outbound route to Canton, which shall avoid not just Batavia but the pestilential Indies altogether; a territory free from the control of the Dutch or any other European power in Asia; a source of certain export trade with the Chinese; and the surety that this commodity may be had only for the labor involved in obtaining it, but will not otherwise detract from investment or profit. A deliberate pause.

I propose that we form a company and outfit at least two ships—more if possible—which shall proceed to the Cape of Good Hope and then, taking the route Captain Cook traveled in his last two voyages, sail not northeastward into the Indian Ocean but due south. Due south and then due east. Along here—he pointed to the vast ocean space lying between South Africa and New Holland—Here… to New Zealand!

*     *     *

So Curt Christoph’s idea came into sudden life like a wet baby slapped on its bottom, and Recording Secretary Memmling’s laconic aufrührisch (uproar) noted the result. Ah, only the young could conceive such an idea: the old would be dismayed by its outlandishness! One need only look at the map to see why. The route from South Africa to Canton followed a bee-line through Batavia—that was why the Dutch were in Batavia. That was why other European powers were nestled in the same general area—Portuguese in Timor, Spanish in the Philippines, British in India and soon in Penang on the Straits of Malacca, and even tiny Denmark, in the Nicobar Islands north of Sumatra. France alone of the sea powers lacked a station, having lost its place in India in the Seven Years War; but France, too, this very year 1785, would reacquire Pondicherry. Powers interested in the China trade sought to locate their stations near Canton, and the Dutch were best-placed, even if the climate and health were abominable. But New Zealand, New Zealand! Oh, the uproar!

God in heaven, young man, it is so distant—what, five thousand, six thousand miles out of the way? said one, pointing to the islands’ position on the map.

Ye gods, young man: New Zealand!—and don’t the Dutch claim it? said another, looking back and forth between the Dutch Indies and New Zealand.

Or even the English? asked a third, looking at Hindoostan.

Then Recording Secretary Memmling noted: Einwände zu Menschenfressern. (Objections to cannibals.) It was almost as if he had written, Stillborn.

But what of the natives, Herr von Allmen? exclaimed the banker. The cannibals! You mention the hazards of pirates in the Indies but every man here has heard of the horrible man-eating savages of New Zealand! Why even that Captain… that Frenchman… —what was his name, Rohdau?

Marion.

Yes, Marion. Marion attests to it, hah, for if I am not mistaken, he was eaten by them, was he not?

Yes, sir, said Curt Christoph. I cannot deny it. But I have to point out that Captain Marion and his unfortunate crew were very imprudent in their dealings with the New Zealanders. Cook, on the other hand, had far more experience with them, and he was able to find locations in the two islands which were inhabited by natives not so bellicose—

‘Bellicose’? They’re not just bellicose, young man, they—

—nor of such crude appetites. In fact, Captain Cook was able to return repeatedly over many years to one of these locations, and in another he found almost no natives at all. Cook’s experience in New Zealand extended over a full decade—it was much longer and more balanced than that of an occasional French voyager. The French portrayal of natives everywhere has always been fanciful. What do they expect of simple tribesmen?

Freiherr l’Estrange, spurred perhaps by the allusion to French sensibility, entered the conversation: Come, come, Curt Christoph! You can not expect us to believe that these New Zealanders are just ‘simple tribesmen’! They are well known by everyone to be extremely warlike! Surely, any such sealing station as you propose would have to be an armed camp.

Recording Secretary Memmling’s Minutes:

At this point, Herr von Allmen junior introduced an epistle from the Magister Ad. Sixt. l’Estrange, a colleague of Dr. Forster in Halle, addressing three topics, viz., (α) Sea Bears, (β) Soil & Climate, and (γ) Natives. Said epistle is appended as part of these Minutes…

"The assembled gentlemen—Excellency—are no doubt aware that the esteemed Professor Dr. Forster—a native of West Prussia, by the way—and his son were botanists aboard Captain Cook’s ship on the second voyage. The Forsters