Aztec Civilization: Destiny to Conquer America!-Chapter 1579 - 1118: The Value of Gold Mountain, from Wa Country to the Ming Dynasty

The island mountains stood high, and the rocks shimmered with flowing gold. As the golden sun set in the west, the bay sparkled with a golden light. The two Kingdom Priests looked around and gazed at the flowing Jinxi and the continuous Gold Mountain, both feeling a heart-stirring divinity. This golden divinity, revealed in the mountains and rivers, both inspires pious devotion and incites greedy desire.

"This magnificent gold mine, this vast and boundless Great Jin Mines! It is a true miracle guided by the Chief Divine and the strength granted to us by the Chief Divine!… Praise the Chief Divine, praise His protection, and praise the divine mountains and seas!…"

"Praise the Chief Divine! Praise His protection! Praise the sacred mountains and seas!…"

The two Kingdom Priests bowed their heads and prayed devoutly for a while. The dozens of Samurai around them also followed and bowed in prayer. In front of this vast mountain island gold mine, the two priests, dozens of Samurai, and the more than two hundred tribespeople at the port all appeared quite small.

On this desolate, chilly, and sparsely populated Far North Coast, generations of struggling native tribes never had the ambition or the lofty expectations to claim the sacred mountains and seas and the land as the possession of any tribe. Instead, large tribes from various places often referred to themselves as descendants of the Divine Mountain, Holy Lake, or animals. It is the snowfall of the mountains and seas, the Divine, and the Ancestor Spirit that truly inhabit the hearts of the people as the true masters of this land!…

"Priest Jin Shan, over the past year, how much sand gold has your Divine Jinxi Port base extracted?"

"High Priest Miki, the sand gold we extracted is all in the altar of the Chief Divine… it's just that shallow pool, with about three hundred jin in total… mining gold ultimately requires too much manpower! In the river, even in the most fertile Jinxi, an able-bodied man has to work for several days to extract one jin of gold sand. As for mining gold in this Gold Mountain, one must first select high-quality gold stones, then smash them, and then use water to screen them like panning for gold. Only one jin of gold can be extracted from a thousand jin of gold stones, requiring more than ten days of labor from an able-bodied man. And here at our Divine Jinxi Port, there are only over two hundred tribespeople, with just a hundred able-bodied men…"

"Chief Divine's protection! Selecting a thousand jin of gold stones to extract one jin of gold?… Hmm, panning gold is time-consuming, mining gold is labor-intensive… this gold extraction is indeed a laborious task!…"

Scholar Miki looked at the small and simple port camp around him and then at the vast, continuous gold mine belt, expressing his sincere admiration.

In this era, mining gold was an extremely labor-intensive task, roughly divided into two kinds: panning gold in water and mining gold in the mountains. Panning gold in water utilized the higher density of gold to precipitate and select gold sand hidden in the riverbed. Mining gold in the mountains required first selecting high-grade golden ore, then using manpower to crush and grind the ore. Finally, the method of panning for gold was used to wash and screen it.

According to later standards, being able to extract 50g of gold from one ton of selected golden ore was already considered a rich mine. As for what Priest Jin Shan mentioned, extracting one jin of gold from a thousand jin of selected gold stones, if placed in later times, this would be shocking, an outrageous exaggeration!…

Yet the awe-inspiring Gold Mountain and Jinxi truly shone before their eyes! This sparsely vegetated island was resting on a gold mine with a radius of ten miles, enriched with tens of tons of gold. It is no exaggeration to say that this desolate small island by the sea is the place with the highest gold content on the 25-million-square-kilometer North American continent!

In fact, within what would later be called Douglas Island lay the largest gold mine within the Juneau Great Jin Minerals Belt, the largest gold mine in all of North America—the Treadwell Gold Mine.

This place was where the Alaska gold rush began in later times. In the forty years of the late 19th-century exploitation, the Treadwell Mine recorded at least 3 million ounces of gold output, over 85 tons!… As for unrecorded privately mined gold, it is entirely incalculable. It can be said that this is truly a Gold Mountain, a Great Gold Mountain never seen before!

"Chief Divine's protection! High Priest Miki, the tribes of the Far North Coast have never valued gold and silver. To them, this gold is just heavy, shiny stones. The several hundred jin of gold extracted from the port cannot be used to exchange for goods or to attract tribes; it's more worthwhile to catch more fish and cut more trees…"

"Priest Jin Shan, I understand your meaning. Whether on the Western Sea Coast or the Far North Coast, gold holds little value. Only by transporting gold across the sea for trade with those powerful and prosperous Western Sea Tribes can you exchange it for amazing wealth, and even craftsmen and people!…"

Said Scholar Miki, squinting his eyes and deeply observing the captured craftsmen from Wa Country and Korea engaged in gold panning. Captivated by the divinity of gold, those captives' faces were filled with joy at every piece of shining gold sand they panned, often exclaiming in excitement and praying devoutly to the Chief Divine…

"Witness the Chief Divine! If the Western Sea Tribes value gold so much… perhaps we can use this incredible Great Jin Mine to recruit people from the major tribes of the Western Sea to come and mine gold… No matter what, winning over these tribes with gold must come first…"

Scholar Miki's eyes flickered, his mind pondering long-term thoughts. He said no more, only chatting with Priest Jin Shan a bit more about the port's development situation.

Sitting atop the Great Jin Mine Belt, the Divine Jinxi Port has rich mineral deposits but is short of suitable arable land. The potato yield is very low, with only a few dozen acres of developed potato fields. The port's primary food source remains the catch from this bay. The many rugged bays of this island are indeed places where fish gather and marine life is abundant.

"Simply put, it's not suitable for farming but suitable for fishing, so we need ships!… To expand the scale of the port, to support a larger population, we need as many ships as possible! Especially small fishing boats suitable for coastal waters…"

The Ocean-Blocking Sea Ship stayed at the Divine Jinxi Port for two days. After replenishing a batch of food and water, it sailed southeastward under the reluctant gazes of the captives. The next port, Divine Eagle Wing Port, opposite Haida Island, was about a thousand miles away, a voyage of only six or seven days.

Shipwright Kim Sun-su donned his fur coat; his only linen garment had been used to wrap a handful of gold sand. Sail Maker Park Sun-pan was much smarter; he quietly took a small piece from a spare sail, wrapped up four taels of gold sand tightly, and hid it in the crevice at the bottom of the ship's hold. Meanwhile, Blacksmith Otani was still lost in thought, pondering how to craft gold-panning tools.

"Oh Chief Divine! That gold-panning dish is just too small and slow! If only we could make a large gold-panning basket that could screen hundreds of jin of sand and soil at once… yes, and also get a long-necked gold sand jar to suck the gold sand from the sand and soil…"

"Oh Divine Buddha in the sky! That really is a Gold Mountain! Truly the Gold Mountain that the Family Head dreams of day and night…"

"Oh Main God Great Bodhisattva! More than three hundred thousand stone high in Echizen, where the Victory Hill Gold Mountain alone claims fifty thousand… but the scale of this Jiao People Gold Mountain is probably at least twice that of the Victory Hill Gold Mountain, at least one hundred thousand stone!…"

In the corner of the ship's cabin, Ship Officer Murakami and Translator Watanabe sat across from each other in silence. Both had hidden gold sand in their bosoms, their expressions ever-changing. After witnessing the 'Gold Mountain' with their own eyes and panning for gold for two days, this gold mine with incredible reserves was etched deeply into their minds, impossible to forget.

At the close of the 15th century, as the Takeda Clan's guardian Takeda began to revive under the hand of Takeda Nobutora, and discovered the Kai Gold Mine during a land survey, the Sado Gold Mountain was still dormant and yet to be uncovered by the Shogunate. The greatest ongoing gold mine in Wa Country was the Victory Hill Gold Mine in Echizen, located in the rice-rich Fukui Prefecture. But the scale of this gold mine could not compare with that of the Treadwell Gold Mine…

Simply put, in Wa Country at this time, the gold output was very limited. In the gold-and-silver-lacking Ming Dynasty, the Hsianning Gold Mine discovered during the early Ming was also small in scale. Compared to the demand of various levels of the Ming Dynasty, the production of gold and silver in the Ming Dynasty was just a drop in the bucket. At this time, the whole of East Asia was in a state of extreme scarcity of precious metals!

In the 15th-century Ming Dynasty, the ratio of gold to silver was at least 1 tael to 15 taels. During the Yongle Period, the price of rice once fell to seven stone of rice per tael of silver. By the Chenghua and Hongzhi eras, it was two qian of silver for one stone of rice, that's five stone rice per tael of silver… Thus, the purchasing power of 1 tael of gold, in the current Ming Dynasty, was worth 75 stone of rice! And this was a real purchase, with no need to worry about exchange losses in buying grain. Approximately three to four stone of rice was enough to support an adult male for a year! So, as long as 1 tael of gold could be panned, it was sufficient to support a large family of twenty or thirty for a year…

"Oh Great Buddha Vizilobo! If a gold mountain of such scale were known… even across thousands of miles, tens of thousands of impoverished people would throw caution to the wind and rush in like moths to a flame!…"