John Sandoval contemplates a possible Mongol conquest of North America:
"'Good God, Manse! When Columbus gets here, he'll find his Grand Cham all right! The Sachem Khan of the strongest nation on earth!'
"Sandoval stopped. Everard listened to the gallows creak of branches in the wind." (p. 149)
(I am having problems with the phrase, "Grand Cham.")
Yet again, the wind comments. Why do the branches sound like gallows? Because the Mongols, herdsmen, not farmers, would not be in an irreconcilable conflict with the Native Americans and the Chinese would be a civilizing influence. Because Sandoval, and with him Everard, suddenly sees Mongols as preferable to Europeans. Because all that the two Patrolmen need to do is to stay put through the crucial point and thus they will kill the history in which Sandoval grew up in poverty and his mother died of TB...
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That gallows creaking of tree branches is a pathetic fallacy reminding us of the doom of both the American Indians AND the timeline leading to the Danellians if the Mongols were not prevented from conquering the Americas. And Sandoval had to make a decision on whether or not to help the Mongols.
Ad astra! Sean
"Grand Cham" is a product of Europe's limited knowledge of China -- for example, the common name for China was "Cathay", which is a corruption of a dynastic name, Khitai, in turn deriving from the tribal title of a group of nomad conquerors who ruled northern China in the early medieval period.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I did know I came across a title like that in other reading, but I could not quite recall where.
And the Chinese word for "Emperor" was "Ti."
Ad astra! Sean
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