Pacific Coast as far as the Canadian Border; where the states of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada should have been, appeared the Mormon Republic. "This is our country, Congreve," whispered Brigham softly, "our Godgiven land."
Considerable territory in the Central States lay simply marked American Indian Federation. "A British protectorate," remarked the consul.
Congreve sat down abruptly. "I don't understand it," he breathed dazedly.
The Consul smiled sympathetically. "I'm afraid you have been suffering delusions, my boy. That Louisiana spy was using you as a defenseless tool."
Congreve looked up again. "Nonsense!" he snapped, suddenly defiant. "The United States of America, my country, is no delusion." But his eyes fell on that map and his spirits sagged again.
During the next few days
Congreve went around hopelessly
befuddled. He had finally been
forced to take everything about him
at its face value. Things were so
very obviously real. But it was the
similarities rather than the differences
which staggered him. For example,
the homeland of the British,
the seat of His Majesty's Government,
was not known as England but
Britton. Scotland, Wales, and Eire
were on the map, but he soon found
that there was nowhere near the
amount of distinction among them
that he had known. The money, with
the crowned head of the King, the
people, American-seeming, yet possessed
of a certain oddness about
them that indicated the man of a
British Dominion, the soldiers and
flags, and the papers. . . especially
the papers.
The news, their very make-up was the manner of London papers, though there did seem to be a degree of Americanization about them. And the headlines, such as: Revolt sweeps Florida, Vasquez out, or Report secret maneuvers on Mississippi frontier, and such like. And Europe was all garbled too. Everything was different, yet things were subtly as he had known them. Names were similar, sometime identical, as were fashions—these, however, never reached beyond similarity.
He looked into history. That, too, was markedly similar (and different). There were fundamentally the same migrations of people, the same general movements of nations, the same general wars. But their dates (relatively) were different.
There had been an American Revolution. It had broken out around 1778, the revolutionary forces had been commanded by a General from Virginia. But his name was Rawlins, not Washington. But the British had put down the rebels and executed their leaders. However, within a century economic forces had culminated in a dominionship for the colonies and from that time on they attained a degree of independence approaching, but not exactly like, the politico-economic and geographic independence of the United States he knew.
In 1800 an adventurer from Corsica had arisen in France and had gained power and set up an Empire. His name was Marinet and he looked a great deal like Napoleon. In many ways he was greater than Napoleon. But he ruled a longer time, and as one result the territory of Louisiana never left French control, becoming an Empire under a cousin
