Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 254 Antsiranana ([-])

On May 1640, 5, even in the dry season, this hot and humid place along the northeastern coast of Madagascar was still getting some rain.This was the case today. An unexpected thunderstorm in the afternoon drove all the Eight Banners slaves who were working on the construction site and in the forest back to their tents.Some supervisors and soldiers held whips and yelled at them to hang up the screens on the doors and windows to prevent mosquitoes from running in.

In the past two days, several Eight Banners slaves had outbreaks of malaria symptoms such as periodic chills, chills, and sweating, which made everyone feel a little terrified.They should be infected with malaria after being bitten by mosquitoes within a day or two of landing. After a certain incubation period, the malaria parasites are now beginning to get sick.Seeing the painful appearance of these people when they fell ill, everyone felt sorry for them.

As the temporary supreme officer of the camp, Daoist Shou placed these sick people in an empty wooden house, and at the same time sent several people to take care of and monitor them, and try to give them the best food and living quarters.In the absence of medical treatment, these people are basically hopeless. As a Taoist priest who travels around, Taoist Shou also has superficial medical skills, and he still has a deep sense of awe for such things as "miasma".

Although there are several packets of precious cinchona tree bark powder in the iron cabinet in his room, these medicines, which are priced like gold, are not used to treat slaves.Even ordinary soldiers have a hard time getting treatment unless they are granted special permission. These medicines are prepared for managers, technicians, officers, and senior non-commissioned officers. Others are left to their fate when they get sick.

Among these sick slaves, except for a few who were alive, in good health, and with strong immunity, the Taoist priests of longevity were not optimistic about their survival, and they might die after a few attacks.Sending people to take care of them now is just to reassure the slaves, so that their morale will not be too low and affect work efficiency.

This thunderstorm didn't look small, with thick bean-sized raindrops falling densely from the sky, and the surrounding area was so white that you couldn't see a few meters away.Taoist Shou was a little worried. The small stream a few hundred meters away from the camp was fine on weekdays, and the water volume was average, but now that it is raining so much, the water volume will increase sharply after a period of time. Time does not affect the good here.The rivers in these tropical areas are like this. The water flow is short and turbulent. It is usually fine, but it is easy to flood when it rains heavily.

However, the Antsiranana area is currently in the dry season, and the monthly precipitation is only a few tens of millimeters, which will not cause any major disasters.But be careful when the rainy season starts in November. At that time, there will be hundreds of millimeters of precipitation every month, which is comparable to the annual precipitation in the Cape Town area.And in the next few months, there may be floods, so if you want to live in this place, you must have good water conservancy facilities.

"Mr. Pessonin, this thunderstorm will probably last until night." Daoist Shou stood under the eaves of the only brick house in the camp, looking out at the vast rain and fog, and said, "I think the river is really It needs to be remodeled. Li Yi said before leaving that it is suitable to be transformed into an artificial reservoir, and I think this is correct. We should do this, otherwise the raging river may rush out of the river when the rainy season comes. Caused us a lot of trouble."

"Please call me Pei Suoning, thank you. I have a surname, and my surname is Pei." Pei Suoning, a former Finnish youth, corrected Taoist Shou's words a little, and then said: "In general, your suggestion is really very good. Pertinent, but I don't think it's our number one priority right now."

"Of course this is not our top priority now, I'm talking about the future." Daoist Shou laughed, "What we need now is to build more brick and tile houses, as well as docks for the fleet to dock and unload next time Trestle bridge. Oh, by the way, we also need to build a level road for wagons to pass."

"Housing is the most important thing." Pei Suoning looked up at the roof, and then said with satisfaction: "You can see that this brick and tile house is very good. The architectural design of the water town in southern China has a simple structure and rapid construction. The tiles can drain rainwater under the eaves as quickly as possible, keeping the house dry. It only takes less than 1 yuan of red bricks, some tiles and a wooden beam to build such a house. Captain Shou, I think we need more houses like this. Now there is only one set with three rooms, which is far from enough. Look at those pine board houses. It rains heavily outside and light rains inside. The environment is really too Bad. If it takes a long time, everyone will get sick easily."

"The total amount of bricks is less than 10 yuan, and the cement, lime, and wood brought in are not very much. And we need to build too many projects at present, and the transportation capacity is not enough to transport building materials from the local area. This is really a problem. It’s difficult.” Daoist Shou wiped the rainwater splashed on his face, and then said: “It’s best to be able to burn bricks locally. If this can be achieved, then our construction progress will be much faster, after all, thousands of miles from the local It is time-consuming and laborious to transport all the way here, and it is not economical, and the small amount of goods transported is not enough for a long time. It's a pity, I don't think it will be possible here..."

"Can't what?" Pessonin interrupted Taoist Shou with a smile, and then said, "Don't worry, Company Commander Shou. I have surveyed the area within a few kilometers in the past few days, and you didn't find that this is a typical Karst karst terrain?"

"Ka...Ka what?" Daoist Shou asked with some embarrassment.His cultural level is not high, and he can barely recognize more than 200 characters at present, so he has always respected Pei Suoning, a "cultural man".

"It's karst terrain." Pei Suoning explained: "Simply put, this kind of terrain is generally rich in a large amount of limestone, marble, gypsum, clay, bauxite, rock salt and other minerals. Among them, limestone and marble are used Lime and cement are important raw materials, and clay is the raw material for bricks and tiles. So, what you said is that it is completely feasible and very suitable to produce these building materials locally, because the local raw materials are so abundant gone."

"Really?" Daoist Shou was a little excited, this is a great thing, "Old Pei, do you know the technology of burning bricks and cement? If you can, we will start doing it in the near future. Nothing else is as important as this." .With large quantities of building materials, we can get here a lot easier."

"Of course I understand." Pei Suoning smiled. At the beginning, he also worked in a brick and tile factory for a while, "Actually, I am not the only one who understands. Some soldiers of the 101st company were born in Dongfanggang Construction Materials Company Workers, the least of them have been working for three or four years. It’s just that the Government Council has replaced them with slave labor in the past two years, but I think their old profession must not be left behind. You can organize them and wait Tomorrow, after the rain stops, I will start to think of a way to erect the brick kiln first. It happened that a batch of refractory bricks was shipped last time, which was originally intended to be used in other places, and now it happens to be used to build the kiln first.”

The rain stopped that night.Early the next morning, Taoist Shou took people to the creek area to check the water conditions.I saw that the creek water after the rain was a little cloudy, and the water flow was very fast, but the water level did not overflow the river bank.Most of the rainwater rushed into the bay along the river, which made Taoist Shou somewhat relieved. This is really good news.

Of course there is bad news.Last night, several slaves started to wobble, and now they have also been transferred to the resettlement room and resettled on the spot.So far, 300 of the 11 slaves have been infected with malaria. In addition, there should be a considerable number of slaves who have been infected with malaria, but they are still in the incubation period.

What a headache!Taoist Shou is really depressed. He has done everything to the extreme, but he didn't expect so many people to get sick. What should we do?Alas, we can only continue to strengthen the anti-mosquito education. Yesterday he asked those who had malaria, most of them were bitten by mosquitoes on the first day.They were working in the woods at the time. Due to the hot weather, they secretly untied their collars and headscarves, exposing a lot of skin, which led to mosquito bites.It seems that stricter measures will be implemented in the future, and these slaves must develop the good habit of not exposing their skin in the mosquito breeding ground.

To get rid of these troublesome things, Taoist Shou selected 100 strong and strong Xhosa blacks from the slaves, and then brought 10 Eight Banner supervisors and 16 soldiers from 101 Company with tools and weapons to Pei Suo Rather choose the clay land to go.

It is about one kilometer away from the camp, next to a vast coconut grove, and the ground is covered with the unique red soil of the Falkland Islands.According to Pei Suoning, the soil here is relatively viscous, which is very suitable for making and firing bricks from soil.

Now that the "experts" said so, and several of his subordinates who were from brick and tile factories also nodded in agreement with Pei Suoning's opinion, Taoist Shou simply authorized Pei Suoning to do the job without any suspicion.He is only responsible for providing Pei Suoning with supplies and labor, as well as necessary security guards.

Pei Suoning is also a practical person. After Taoist Shou handed over the matter to him, he took a machete and led a group of slaves to clean up the low bushes and level the foundation on the spot, so as to clear out a piece of land that could be used as soon as possible. The place where the kiln was built.

What he plans to build here is the kind of small earthen kiln with high energy consumption and low output that was used in the early days of the local area.No way, although the technology of the three wheel kilns currently in production in the local area is advanced enough, the manpower and material resources required in the initial stage of construction are relatively large, which is not suitable for small-scale operation of the Antsiranana Colony at this stage.Therefore, he planned to build this kind of relatively economical small earthen kiln for later use.After the colony has a certain foundation in the future, we will find a way to replace it with a more advanced wheel kiln.

(End of this chapter)