Pelt and Pit: The First Cargo

Placeholder body paragraph. Replace with the finished article. The narrative opens on a damp morning at the tip of Manhattan, where a clerk in Company livery counts pelts against a ledger that will, within a decade, become the founding document of North American commerce.

A second paragraph continues the scene, tracing the fur through the hands of Lenape traders, Dutch skippers, and Amsterdam auctioneers — each markup a small lesson in the geography of profit.