Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1045 On the Bank of the Wujiang River ([-])

On June 1654, 8, it rained heavily.

There is also a lot of winter precipitation on the prairie on the east coast, which makes the water on the East Lake suddenly rise.However, the pioneers who settled nearby were not too worried, because the lake was too small (with an area of ​​only 0.3 square kilometers), and the water storage capacity was even more limited-but in any case, this still greatly facilitated the surrounding residents. Life, their daily production water is almost all from this at present.

This settlement currently has about 30 residents, most of whom are from the state capital of Minglai. It is located on the shore of Timbo Lake (Timbo Lake), less than [-] kilometers east of Yuer Township, and is called Donghu Township.At the same time as this settlement, Huangdian Township (a small town of Petras Coloradas, known for its deserted meadows) and Laizi Township (a small town of Argota, a later generation) were established in the northeast. Surrounded by a piece of forest on the left and a piece on the right, it looks like a "scorpion" on the grassland, hence the name), Guanku Township (located on the banks of the Da Keguai River west of the town of Lorenzo Heres in later generations, Wujiang River The regional administration built a medium-sized grain depot and an inland wharf here, and sent people to cultivate the surrounding areas, hence the name) and three settlements.

Each of these four settlements has one to two thousand settlers. Together with Yuer Township, Fuguo Port, and Qingcun Township, which have been established for a long time, they will become the basic county area of ​​Fuguo County in the future—obviously, This is another large county with a vast territory in the Wujiang area, which is of great significance to the development of the Wujiang area.

There are a large number of native palm trees on the banks of the East Lake. This kind of tree generally only grows in the western and southern parts of the eastern prairie. It is a very common tree on the eastern prairie.In addition, there are some isolated tree pokeweeds a little far from the lake. This kind of cork tree with a height of 15-18 meters is evergreen all the year round. It is the most common tree by the river and lake, although its economic value is not very high. It is big, but it is one of the favorite trees of the local residents - a certain fallen scholar from Daming was attracted by the blooming white flowers on its branches, and once wrote a poem about it.

Since Donghu Township is a newly established settlement, the biggest problem that plagues it is naturally the lack of population.Two thousand residents sounds like a lot, but it is really not enough to start construction.In particular, the Wujiang District Administrative Office requested to improve the traffic conditions between the settlements - the current prairie on the east bank has a lot of precipitation, resulting in extremely muddy land after the rain, with many swamps and puddles, and the traffic conditions are very troublesome. ——Afterwards, every township and even every village faced a certain degree of labor shortage: people needed to level the land, build houses, build reservoirs, build roads, and militia military training , It is almost necessary to drain every energy of the new immigrants.

Fortunately, the State Development Administration and the Ministry of Communications did not fail to notice the difficulties of these new towns, so they spared valuable funds and manpower to undertake the construction of roads between towns, and the roads they built were naturally called Do "national highway".

To be honest, the concept of national roads has just been officially mentioned on the east coast. In the past, the central government, regions, counties, and townships each built their own roads (even villages built dirt roads), with different types and standards. Although the traffic problem has been solved to a large extent, it is undoubtedly extremely chaotic at the management level.Where there is money and people (a large number of people means that corvees can be collected to build roads), the roads are not bad—but only relative; but where there is no money and no one, the roads are very bad, generally It is made of clay or fine gravel. During the rainy season (it rains almost all year round on the east coast), the road surface is so muddy that even the axles of a carriage can pass through it; There are many ruts (often tens of centimeters deep), which often damage vehicles and greatly reduce traffic efficiency.

This is the case in these places in Donghu Township. The rain and snow alternate and continuous in winter, which has caused great obstacles to road traffic.After arriving at Phu Quoc Port, a large number of materials carried by sea ships can only be transported by horse-drawn carriage to the newly established towns in the east, which naturally depends extremely on the local traffic conditions.

Because of this, some technicians from the Civil Engineering and Construction Division, the Road Division of the State Development Administration and the Ministry of Communications worked together to build a high-standard national highway between Donghu Township and Fuguo Port.Speaking of this, I have to mention that the national roads on the east bank are currently divided into three standards, namely, first-class national roads, second-class national roads, and third-class national roads.

Among them, the first-class national roads usually refer to the roads connecting the capital with major cities and ports and national defense special lines, with a road width of 7 meters; the second-class national roads connect counties and towns and towns where major towns or stations are located, with a road width of 6 meters; The third-class national road refers to the road connecting ordinary settlements. The width of the road is not clearly specified, and the width of the original local road shall prevail (if there is no road, it shall be built according to the actual situation during road construction).

Obviously, the road from Donghu Township to Fuguo Port belongs to the third-class national road, with a total length of less than 30 kilometers, and will cross many rivers and creeks (meaning the construction of bridges), and the cost is quite high. It is estimated to be no less than 4 yuan and is currently under construction.

This kind of road adopts the new construction standard issued by the Ministry of Communications. Taking the second-class national road with a width of 6 meters as an example, there are subgrade roads with a width of 2.5 meters on both sides of the road for future widening; Side ditches will be set up, and shade trees will be planted on the outermost layer with a distance of 10 meters, in order to clarify the boundaries of the road land and add to the beauty of the road.The cross-sectional slope of the road surface is 7%. Based on the principle of saving construction costs, spare roadbeds on both sides, side ditches and other facilities can be omitted in places with high soil accumulation.

However, due to the lack of financial resources of the administrative office in the Wujiang area, and the small population of Donghu Township (which means a relatively small labor force), this third-class national highway does not use a single layer like the wealthy areas (such as Ping'an County, an important town in the north) /Multi-layer asphalt pavement - This kind of pavement is expensive, the cost of a single layer is 2.72 yuan per square meter, and the cost of multi-layer is 3.8 yuan. Even Ping'an County can't make too many, but this is still cheaper than some asphalt produced by the coking plant The reason for this is that other counties do not have this condition—they use relatively common sandy soil/gravel road surfaces. Using this type of road surface, if bridges and other facilities with high construction costs are not counted, the cost per square meter is about It can be controlled at just over 1 yuan, which is still affordable.

After the construction of this third-class national road, the Wujiang District Administrative Office will also follow the example of the eastern coastal area and set up long-distance four-wheeled carriage passenger/freight business between various settlements. After all, the railway line is expensive and it is impossible to cover all areas. , so most of the civil transportation still depends on roads—especially in the east coast prairie area where there is no large surface runoff (there are no navigable rivers that run through the border), even if some rivers meander for hundreds of kilometers. It needs artificial widening and dredging, which obviously cannot be completed in a short time, so road transportation is also extremely important in today's east coast.Even in some areas, the road also served as a backup line for the railway, which undoubtedly made the horse-drawn carriage more and more popular everywhere.

"Our grandma doesn't care about it, and my uncle doesn't love it. If we don't build roads extending in all directions—at least it must be a third-class national road with a low standard—the construction of Fuguo Port Wharf will be meaningless. In the future, Fuguo If the county is established, it will govern a total of seven towns (Fuguo Town is the county seat, and the other six townships are the hinterland). If the roads are not built, once it rains and the road traffic is cut off, wouldn't the towns in the county be They are all separated, so the role of the National Development Administration and the Ministry of Communications is still very obvious, and they have given us a lot of help."

"The Wujiang River area is rich in water sources, crisscrossed by river branches, and fertile alluvial soil on the river bank. If managed well, there will be countless high-quality irrigated land in the future. Whether it is planting wheat, rice or other crops, it is a very good choice. But because of this, the construction of high-grade roads is imminent. Otherwise, how to transport the grain, vegetables, poultry eggs, and livestock from the agricultural township in the hinterland to the county port? And if the agricultural products cannot be transported out, how will the farmers increase their income? If farmers cannot increase their income, their property level will inevitably widen the gap with that of the eastern coastal areas over time. It is simply unbearable for us to see counties with extremely low per capita income in the Wujiang area, which is known as the "Land of Fish and Rice". Things. Therefore, if you want to get rich, you must first build roads, and we must find a way to complete these third-class national roads no matter what.”

"Transporting agricultural products, living materials and production tools, maintaining law and order, facilitating people's travel, and strengthening communication links between places are all the significance of national highways. After all, we cannot expect everyone to ride horses when they go out. This is unrealistic and impossible. Therefore, the construction of these third-class national highways is inevitable. Not only our county, not only our region, but also other regions and counties must find ways to complete high-grade highways—at least third-class national highways— - the construction of

These are the public views of the chief officials of several nearby settlements.In their view, if seven townships are merged into one county in the future, there will be a high probability that the population will exceed 20. It is unimaginable that such a large county does not have any decent roads.Of course, in such a large county, if you want to connect the towns, even the most common third-class national highway will take at least one to two hundred kilometers, which is the construction cost of [-] yuan.

This amount of money may not be a large amount for the country, but it is definitely an astronomical figure for the local county-level governments-even if the bulk is paid by the Ministry of Communications and the State Railway Administration, they only need to pay a small part, but the financial There are still many difficulties in finance—but no matter how difficult the finances are, we must continue to fix them, even if they are divided into five or ten years. This is obviously the unanimous understanding of the county.

(End of this chapter)