Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 253 Antsiranana ([-])

Li Yi doesn't plan to stay here for long.

After all, his main task now is to transport people and materials between Hezhong Port and Antsiranana, rather than being a "project manager" here.Therefore, in two or three days at the latest, he will temporarily leave the bay with all the ships and return to the river fort to transport people and supplies.

Moreover, when he returns to the Fort in the River, it is estimated that Shi Qinjie, the captain of the Madagascar pioneering team, will also come by boat from his native Dongfang Port.It is said that the Government Affairs Council found a way to rent a lot of Spanish and Portuguese merchant ships in the mainland to transfer people and materials between Dongfang Port and Hezhong Port.

There is no way, the capacity of the East Coast Republic is too tight.The existing seven transports (five flutes plus two armed transports) were completely inadequate, three of which had gone to Suez with the Second Fleet in January, and three more were anchored there.As for the only remaining flute-shaped transport ship "Penglai", it undertook the task of trade and transportation with Brazil and the Caribbean.Even the ships of the Navy's First Fleet were mobilized to use their small cabins to barely transport some supplies.

As for the trade with Europe, the Government Council tried their best, relying partly on several Galen sailboats owned by the Pasquale family, and entrusting them to rent several large merchant ships at high prices in France to help with transportation. .As for the transportation between the local coast and Colonia, you can only rely on the dozens of tons of inland water transport ships to run away. Anyway, it is offshore, so the problem is not big.

It can be seen from this that the current transportation capacity of the East Coast Republic of China has become tense.It is no exaggeration to say that if this situation is not changed, the country's economic development will be severely restricted.Don’t you see, the five ships heading to Suez Port in January only carried 1 bolts of cotton cloth, which is a full 12 bolts from the 21 bolts per year agreed by the two parties. This is mainly due to insufficient transportation capacity.

Therefore, it is impossible for the four-ship formation led by Li Yi to stay here indefinitely. They will also take advantage of the calm waters in Cape Agulhas to increase the distance between Hezhonggang and Antsiranana. The frequency of transportation is to strive to transport more people and materials to this side in order to make full use of the less rainy season in the next few months, and first draw an outline of this side.

Regarding Li Yi's thoughts, Taoist Shou, Kyle, Pessoning, Mo Dashan and others are also aware of it at present, so they simply don't care about the ships parked in the bay. After being unloaded and stored in the simple warehouse on the shore, the construction work started again.

On May 5, when Li Yi's fleet was about to leave Antsiranana Bay and sail south to return to Hezhong Port, dozens of tents and a large number of simple wooden boards had been set up one after another near the initial landing point. house.Tents are used for people to live in, while wooden houses are mostly buildings such as kitchens, warehouses, bathhouses, and outposts.

The weather in the past few days is also quite good, and the thunderstorm weather that is common in November-March and April does not appear every year, so the work of the slaves has made considerable progress in the past few days.First of all, they successfully cleared an open space south of the landing point, which was connected to the original coast near the landing point, with an area of ​​about 11 acres.This area has a relatively high terrain and is not afraid of rainwater accumulation. In the future, the main urban area can be built around this area.If the sewage facilities are properly dealt with when building the urban area, the annual precipitation of about 3-4 mm here is not so difficult to overcome.

When clearing the open space, most of the trees that were cleared out were low and miscellaneous trees with no practical value. Mo Dashan collected them and piled them with the cut weeds, and burned them every night to generate thick smoke to repel mosquitoes. The effect was not bad .

Behind this low forest, extending inland along the flat land, is a large tract of virgin forest.According to Pei Suoning, an apprentice of Meng Hu, the chief zoologist and botanist in the crossing village, many of the trees in it are precious big-leaf red sandalwood, and the trees are relatively high-end wood for furniture and tools.In the future, these trees can be cut down from here and transported back to the mainland, which will also make the development of the Falkland Islands not appear to be so loss-making.Of course, it seems a little out of date to talk about this with the meager maritime capacity on the east coast.

In the short term, the Antsiranana colony is still a place that needs to increase domestic investment, and it is not self-sufficient, at least not yet.There are not even long-term settlers here, unlike the Fort in the River, which has thousands of residents and can export commodities such as wool, leather, liquor, and agricultural products to the mainland on a large scale.

The last ray of sunset disappeared among the western depressions, and many fires were lit in the camp. The burning materials in the fires were some wet twigs, wormwood, and leaves, which produced a lot of smoke.Many slaves were so smoked that they were in tears, but there was no way, the superiors ordered that these things must be used to repel mosquitoes.

In fact, these Eight Banners slaves are still a little puzzled as to why their superiors are so nervous about mosquitoes.From their point of view, if you are bitten by a mosquito, you will not die. Why are you so nervous like now?So much so that they were required to cover their whole bodies tightly under the high temperature of 31-[-] degrees during the day, which was so hot that it was so hot.

In fact, not only the slaves thought this way, but even some supervisors and soldiers of the 101st Company of the Army were a little puzzled, but they were used to obeying orders, and they just did what their superiors asked them to do.In the entire camp, only a few senior management personnel such as Taoist Shou, Pessonin, and Kyle know that these flying mosquitoes are likely to carry the terrible malaria parasite in their bodies.After being bitten by these mosquitoes, people can easily contract malaria, a dismal tropical disease.If there is no specific drug treatment, the person can basically be sentenced to death.

Therefore, Taoist Shou and others attached great importance to the work of mosquito prevention, almost as important as the construction of camps.Their camp was built far away from the small stream, and they would rather run two extra steps when fetching water than build the camp there, because it is likely to be the largest mosquito habitat nearby.As for the several small pools and stagnant pools near the camp, they were filled up as early as the first time and sprinkled with lime for disinfection to ensure that there would be no future troubles.

At this time, Europeans didn't know that the malaria they got in many places was caused by mosquito bites. They simply believed that it was because there were a lot of "toxic substances" left in the air in these wild places, so it was caused by mosquito bites. Cause the colonists to get sick locally.Of course, the time-travelers are not as ignorant and ignorant as they are. They know very well that the malaria parasites carried in mosquitoes are the cause of disease.Therefore, knowing the reason, many things are easier to handle. They have formulated strict anti-mosquito measures and asked everyone to strictly abide by them.In addition, gauze curtains or mosquito nets were hung in every room and tent in the camp to prevent mosquitoes from invading humans. After a few days, the effect seemed to be good.

In several simple board houses made of Parana pine boards brought from the mainland, rows of slaves from the Eight Banners are standing in large wooden barrels filled with hot water, pouring hot water on their bodies, and using soap Trying to scrub his body.And next door to this house, in a wooden house of the same size, a large group of Eight Banners slaves who had bathed were squatting quietly on the ground, holding wooden dinner plates and bowls and chopsticks in their hands. He shoveled the dinner into his mouth.

The dinner for the slaves was simple sorghum rice, canned pickles, and fish soup. This afternoon, some former fishermen from the 101st company from Dingyuan Township caught a lot of sea fish in the bay with fishing nets, so they brought them for the slaves meal.

Li Yi also sat in his captain's room to eat. At this time, Taoist Shou, Kyle and Pessonin were sitting opposite his dining table.Li Yi finished eating a huge lobster in front of him, then wiped his mouth with a napkin, and said: "Tomorrow I will lead the fleet back to Hezhong Port. If all goes well, I will return here again in three months and give You have brought a lot of materials and labor. After I leave, the work here cannot be slack. It is the dry season here, and the weather is more favorable. We should hurry up construction and try to build some permanent buildings with bricks, tiles and cement as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will wait until the rainy season comes. We have more fun when we can't work outside, and our work will be seriously delayed, which will lead to some negative perceptions of me and you in the Executive Committee."

"Don't worry, we will work hard." Hearing that if they fail to complete the work, they will lose points in the eyes of the executive committee, and they can't help but stand up.

"Very good, I hope you can do what you say." Li Yi nodded with a smile, and then said: "By the way, watch your people carefully. Especially those slaves of the Eight Banners, you must use their abilities reasonably. Don't squeeze them too much and don't let them be too relaxed. In short, this degree must be grasped. The rest is a commonplace problem. Yes, mosquito control must be done well. This is the most important thing. Seeing that it is not done according to the regulations Don’t be polite to the people who go up, use the whip to let them know where they are wrong, it is because they are not responsible for their own lives.”

After Li Yi gave some more instructions, everyone returned to the shore by boat.The next day, on May 1640, 5, Li Yi led four ships out of Antsiranana Bay, turned due west, and then went south to the Mozambique Channel, heading for the port in the South African River.

(End of this chapter)