Duquet’s first China trading voyage turns a distant commercial ambition into a working trade route. In Guangzhou, he sells an unusual assortment of furs for a substantial payment in silver, then discovers that a merchant’s interest extends to medicinal roots and fragrant woods. The encounter gives Duquet more than a profitable sale: it suggests that New France’s forests might support a durable, international business beyond the unstable fur trade.

From fur trade to a wider ambition

Before setting out for China, Duquet had begun to question whether fur could provide the lasting fortune he wanted. Beaver pelts arrived in such quantities that French warehouses filled, but the trade could swing between surplus and scarcity; animals might disappear through overtrapping, disease, or causes no trader could predict. He wanted wealth that would last for generations and a family name that could become an honor rather than a curse. He therefore looked for a resource less vulnerable to the fluctuations of animal populations and fashion.

He settled on timber. In his view, New France possessed forests of extraordinary scale, while Europe lacked wood for ships, houses, and fuel. English colonists already supplied pine masts to the navy, and Duquet believed French traders could establish a comparable business. He planned to continue making money in furs while preparing for a future shift to timber, accepting that transport and markets would pose problems. The China voyage grew out of this search for buyers and commodities: it was both a fur-selling expedition and a test of whether distant markets could support the forest enterprise he imagined.

Finding passage and confronting the trade system

Aboard a ship bound for France under Captain Honoré Deyon, Duquet asked how he might get passage on a China-bound vessel. Deyon described a trade that was difficult for an independent merchant to enter. Foreigners needed to join an official delegation and provide costly gifts to the emperor and officials; Chinese buyers were said to want silver rather than European goods. The Dutch East India Company dominated regular voyages, though Deyon had heard of independent captains who might be willing to carry a passenger.

Duquet found such an opening with Captain Outger Verdwijnen. In the Netherlands, he approached the captain with his furs and offered payment for passage as well as cases of Schiedam gin. Verdwijnen took him aboard the Steenarend, an armed, full-rigged, three-masted frigate large enough for more than a hundred men. The captain warned that pirates operated in the South China Sea and that carrying a Frenchman could jeopardize his livelihood if the German shipowner learned of it. The passage therefore depended on a personal bargain within a risky commercial network, not on a straightforward invitation into an open market.

Verdwijnen also explained that his own voyage belonged to a private partnership assembled to trade in Asia despite the Dutch East India Company’s restrictions. He and his associates had joined resources and sailed together, while the company remained watchful and could seize goods and ships belonging to unauthorized traders. Verdwijnen was serving as captain for Herr Grinz and hoped eventually to buy a small fluyt of his own. He doubted such a vessel could carry timber in great quantities and suggested the Indies trade as a better prospect. Duquet, however, persisted in describing New France’s forests. The exchange makes clear the gap between his ambition and the practical constraints of shipping, company power, and cargo capacity.

Guangzhou: rules, goods, and negotiation

On arrival in Guangzhou, Duquet saw a foreign quarter made up of a long line of warehouses and storerooms, its national flags giving it the appearance of a city. Foreign traders lived in assigned buildings and had to conduct business within tightly controlled arrangements. Verdwijnen explained that provisions, merchants, and translators were licensed; ships faced more than sixty separate fees and cargo inspections; foreigners were confined to the Factory quarter and could not enter the city. Duquet’s access to the market was therefore mediated by regulation and by the captain’s established contacts.

Weeks passed before Wuqua, Verdwijnen’s Hong merchant contact, considered Duquet’s offerings. Wuqua apparently expected the usual requests for ceramics, tea, lacquerware, or silk, and initially supposed Duquet’s pack held silver. Instead, Duquet produced rare pelts one by one: arctic fox, mink, marten, ermine, and thick sea otter. Wuqua acknowledged their quality but noted that Russian traders also brought furs and that Guangzhou’s warm climate limited local demand, even if furs might appeal at court or in the north.

Duquet asked for a very high price in silver. Wuqua feigned a faint and countered with a small offer supplemented by silk and tea. Duquet responded with loud, disbelieving laughter and briefly feared that his display had cost him the negotiation. Wuqua’s slight nod suggested otherwise: he treated Duquet’s outburst as an acceptable bargaining ploy, and the two returned to decorum and continued. After a month of bargaining, Duquet accepted a princely sum in silver for the furs, securing a staggering profit. The outcome came not from simply presenting valuable goods but from enduring a prolonged negotiation in which both men tested the other’s expectations and resolve.

A forest market comes into view

The fur sale opened a further conversation. Wuqua said that furs of comparable quality and variety might arouse greater interest on a future visit. He then produced a gnarled root, roughly shaped like a hunched, three-legged man, and asked whether it grew in New France. Duquet recognized it as a root he had seen in the possession of the Indigenous woman who had once saved his life. He confirmed that it was available in his country. Wuqua offered to pay for a quantity, perhaps as much as he had paid for the furs and possibly more, depending on quality and supply.

Duquet immediately added that he could also provide rare woods for fine cabinets. Wuqua singled out sandalwood and other scented woods as desirable. These offers connected the voyage’s immediate success to Duquet’s longer plan: the forest was no longer only a vast resource he imagined might be sold someday, but a possible source of products with identified buyers in an Asian market. The encounter did not itself establish a timber business or resolve the costs of transporting bulky wood. It did, however, give Duquet a commercial lead and reason to believe that further voyages could prepare the way.

Consequences and wider significance

The voyage’s significance lies in the combination of a striking short-term gain and a longer-term change in Duquet’s commercial thinking. He had entered the China trade with fine furs, secured passage through Verdwijnen’s private network, and returned from the Guangzhou negotiations with substantial silver. Wuqua’s interest in roots and fragrant timber suggested that a future cargo need not be limited to fur. Duquet thought that one or two more trips might help launch his forest enterprise, although that prospect remained conditional on Verdwijnen’s willingness to carry him again.

The scene also establishes a pattern that recurs in the book’s treatment of timber markets: forests become valuable to merchants when their products can be moved into distant networks of exchange. Much later, Duke & Breitsprecher would send its first shipload of pine to Sydney, Australia, while its representative discussed a possible New Zealand kauri supply. That later expansion belongs to another generation and does not result directly from Duquet’s voyage, but the parallel sharpens the earlier episode’s importance. Duquet’s China venture makes the global market visible at the moment he begins to imagine timber as a source of lasting wealth; the profits and promise are foregrounded, while the ecological consequences of turning forests into export commodities emerge elsewhere in the novel.