Albatross mail

pg 33

The Agatean Empire is Pratchett's version of China or Japan... (although Twoflower's clothing suggests an American tourist, the glasses are the stereotype of a Japanese tourist. All tourists - at least until recently! - know nothing about the currency of the country they visit, and so overspend, as does Twoflower.)

The Patrician tells Rincewind about the Counterweight Continent:
"Although it is not made of gold, it is true that gold is a very common metal there. Most of the mass is made up of vast deposits of octiron deep within the crust."

I'm reminded of a Twilight Zone episode from the late 1950s, in which 4 crooks steal a bunch of gold, hide in a cave and put themselves in to suspended animation for 100 years. When they wake up one is dead, killed by a rockfall that smashed his suspended animation chamber. Eventually only one is left, and he tries to make his way through the desert with a heavy bag of gold. He dies just as a family draw up in a car. He begs them to save him and says he will give them gold...

The "twist ending" is that gold is no longer valuable 100 years from now - vast deposits of it had been found which lowers the price dramatically.

Such it is in the Counterweight Continent. Because it is such a common metal there, it is not as valuable there as it is in Ankh-Morpork, which explains why Twoflower has such a lot of it.

The Patrician goes on to say:
"I may as well tell you, Rincewind, that there is some contact between the Lords of the Circle Sea and the Emperor of the Agatean Empire...It is only very slight. There is little common ground between us. We have nothing they want, and they have nothing we can afford.... so we exchange greetings by albatross mail."

Pigeons can fly from city to city, but to cross the oceans, an albatross is needed.

Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds allied to the procellariids, storm-petrels and diving-petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. They are absent from the North Atlantic, although fossil remains show they once occurred there too and occasional vagrants are found.

Albatrosses are among the largest of flying birds, and the great albatrosses (genus Diomedea) have the largest wingspans of any extant birds. The albatrosses are usually regarded as falling into four genera, but there is disagreement over the number of species. They have a wingspan of 11 feet.

Albatrosses are highly efficient in the air, using dynamic soaring and slope soaring to cover great distances with little exertion. They feed on squid, fish and krill by either scavenging, surface seizing or diving. Albatrosses are colonial, nesting for the most part on remote oceanic islands, often with several species nesting together. Pair bonds between males and females form over several years, with the use of 'ritualised dances', and will last for the life of the pair. A breeding season can take over a year from laying to fledging, with a single egg laid in each breeding attempt. A Laysan albatross, named "Wisdom" on Midway Island is recognized as the oldest wild bird in the world; she was first banded in 1956 by Chandler Robbins.

Of the 21 species of albatrosses recognised by the IUCN, 19 are threatened with extinction. Numbers of albatrosses have declined in the past due to harvesting for feathers, but today the albatrosses are threatened by introduced species such as rats and feral cats that attack eggs, chicks and nesting adults; by pollution; by a serious decline in fish stocks in many regions largely due to overfishing; and by long-line fishing. Long-line fisheries pose the greatest threat, as feeding birds are attracted to the bait, become hooked on the lines, and drown. Identified stakeholders such as governments, conservation organisations and people in the fishing industry are all working toward reducing this bycatch.

At this point in its history, Anhk-Morpork is a weak city - so says the Patrician - that could be destroyed by the Agatean Empire if it so desired. So the cowardly Rincewind is ordered to make sure that the tourist Twoflower is not harmed in any way during his visit.