Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 720 Patagonia ([-])

With the sound of a whistle, the "Grocery Store No. 2" water supply ship slowly docked at a wooden pier.This is the west side of Tierra del Fuego in the Strait of Magellan, and near Puerto Lalto in Chile later. After a difficult voyage, the "Grocery Merchant 2" finally docked at this place made of logs. On the improvised simple fortress.

"This time I really want to go to the Taoist temple to offer incense, I'm really scared to death!" Second Lieutenant Jiang Yaohui, who was the captain of "Grocery Store No. He took it for granted, with a look of fear on his face.It turned out that when they were approaching their destination and less than half a day's voyage away, the ship sailing at night passed a big iceberg, and everyone who didn't find the iceberg in time was so scared that they wiped their sweat afterwards.

What are you kidding?No matter how hard her hull made of red sandalwood is, not to mention hitting a giant like an iceberg, even a huge ice floe, it will immediately fall apart.One can imagine that on a dark early spring night with howling westerly winds, a group of drowned sailors struggled helplessly in the icy water, only to be swept away by the waves in a short while.

There are some buildings on the pier—all wooden structures, and some people in denim overalls are walking out of the wooden house in twos and threes, looking at the new ship with slightly excited eyes.

They all know this ship, a water supply ship of the First Fleet of the Navy, has traveled between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean many times, and after two of her sister ships have sunk in the strait, this ship is still miraculous Not even a hair on the ground was hurt.The brush with the iceberg in the early hours of this morning was the closest they could get to death, but they still escaped this catastrophe by relying on overwhelming luck. I have to say that sometimes their lives are really hard.

Every arrival of a supply ship will bring a large amount of supplies to this tiny settlement named Beechburg, and of course there will be a new batch of immigrants who come together by boat - the local residents collectively call it "Unlucky ghosts" means that these guys are so unlucky that they were dispatched to such a place like them.

Since the town is called Beech Castle, as the name suggests, it is naturally because the town is surrounded by dense beech forests, and even the town itself is developed on a small beech forest.

According to the preliminary survey by the Ministry of Agriculture on the east coast, there are a large number of southern Fagaceae forests distributed in the vast area extending from southern Patagonia to the southern part of Tierra del Fuego.These forests, stretching across southern Patagonia, are extremely extensive and consist of two species of the genus Fag: the relatively dwarf Antarctic Fag (evergreen) and the tall Dwarf Fag (deciduous, with a few birch-like dwarf false beech).These tree species can generally grow to a height of more than 20 meters, and the height may be about 30 meters. They can grow in barren land or in mountains with thin soil layers. The growth rate is extremely slow, and it often takes about 200 years to grow. , so the wood is extremely dense.

Later generations of the Chilean government opened up the logging rights of these forest lands to private and foreign companies when they were in financial difficulties, which once caused a sharp reduction in the area of ​​Fagaceae forests in Tierra del Fuego and the entire southern Patagonia region.As a last resort, the Chilean government began to take protection measures. In 2004, the Goldman Sachs Group also bought a piece of forest land and donated it to the International Wildlife Conservation Association to establish the Kalujinca Nature Reserve to maintain the natural features there. .

Of course, in Tierra del Fuego in the 17th century, it was still a virgin land with no trace of development.The dense forests, beautiful wild animals and clear and sweet rivers, coupled with the snow-capped mountains in the distance, can't help but make people who come here feel like a fairyland on earth.

But now people from the east coast have come here, along with 45 native immigrants and 33 exiled prisoners. It is worth mentioning that there are only seven women among them.Relying on some of the supplies and equipment sent by the navy, these immigrants began to cut down trees at designated locations along the coast, set up camps, and successfully built a tiny village that could accommodate hundreds of people before winter—a planned village. Small towns that will live off logging and livestock.

At the beginning of winter, the Magellan intelligence station on the north side of the strait came to support another [-] Patagonians.After these tall men, who are generally about [-] meters tall, came to the island, they first built a large-scale Taoist temple, and then held religious ceremonies to let those who originally came from Tuscany in the settlement The Italian Catholics of Nana looked very closely.

After the construction of various facilities was almost complete, these people began to get out of the wooden house when the snow stopped in mid-October, and then gradually cleared the snow on the roads inside and outside the village to prepare for the next logging work.All the wood here is provided by the Pacific Shipyard in Araucan Free City in the north. The shipyard is still in the preparation stage, and the personnel and equipment are not in place yet, and even the factory building has just begun to be built. However, these This does not prevent Beech Castle from starting trial mining of the woodland outside the town.

In the future, when everything here is on the right track, the Government Council will also build a wood drying kiln and a wood processing plant here so as to make use of the rich beech resources here and lay a foundation for the local economy.As long as there are these basic industries, coupled with the policy support of the executive committee in the future, the population of Tierra del Fuego will soon be enriched.After all, on this big island with an area of ​​tens of thousands of square kilometers, the lowest temperature in winter is often only seven or eight degrees below zero, and there are not many times when it exceeds minus ten degrees.In addition, the precipitation here is different from other areas in southern Patagonia, and the annual rainfall is extremely rich, so it still has great development prospects.The Chileans and Argentines of later generations will not develop the empty land, and the people on the east coast will not be polite. I believe that with the arrival of a large number of Ming people, this peaceful land at the ends of the earth will surely usher in great changes.

"Sir, what good things have been shipped this time?" Sergeant McKinley (promoted from corporal to sergeant before winter) who was in charge of staying here asked as he came over in a fur coat.He is wearing a sheepskin coat, and the famous beaver fur coat of Fuego has not yet appeared in this era.In the 20s, the residents of Tierra del Fuego introduced beavers in order to develop the leather industry. At this time, the animals had not been seen at all.However, the introduction of beavers is a huge disaster for the forests on Tierra del Fuego, because this small animal will continue to build dams and turn their living areas into swamps or wetlands, resulting in the drowning of a large number of forests. This is obviously inconsistent with the original intention of the people on the east bank to develop the forest industry here.

But instead of beavers being introduced, something else was introduced on the East Coast.

"Goats, sheep, horses, chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, etc., of course, the most special ones are four bison and seven or eight reindeer that have been transported back from the Far East." More impetuous than those of his peers, I saw him slowly lighting a pipe for himself, and then said: "The livestock I mentioned earlier, including the Far East reindeer, should be raised together first, and then distributed to individuals after the population expands." .As for those North American bison, let them be released into the wild, and let them reproduce freely. In the future, we will continue to put more of their kind on this big island, and strive to make their footprints all over the place The whole of Tierra del Fuego, haha."

"Fortunately, it's not all livestock, there are people! Women!" Sergeant McKinley listened absently to his superior's nagging, while staring intently at a group of people who were slowly descending from the ship's deck.

"Unfortunately, it's an Indian woman!" Seeing the end, Sergeant McKinley sighed regretfully.But if you think about it carefully, this is already the best result. The executive committee can not forget to send women to their colony in the remotest corners of the world, which in itself shows a serious attitude.

Sixty new immigrants and twenty exiled convicts, among them twenty Krandi women and ten Malay women, followed the "Grocery Store No. 2" boat.The arrival of these women unsurprisingly detonated the morale of the men in Beech Town. Even the original seven women in the town were secretly relieved. The feeling of being stared at by dozens of big men is not so good. It couldn't be any better now that someone finally has someone to share the burning gaze that's been cast on their backs all day.But how can those lowly Indian women and Malay women compare with me? Thinking of this, these "seven golden flowers" from Ming Dynasty and Poland straightened their chests involuntarily.

Immediately after the new batch of immigrants disembarked, the old immigrants began to use the simple pulley boom to unload the goods under the command of the crew: a small amount of weapons and ammunition, a large amount of flour and soybean meal, wine, salted fish and bacon, metal tools, construction materials etc.Especially for those building materials, the local Government Council hopes that they will find a local site to build a small brick and earth kiln to produce some bricks and tiles, so as to gradually improve the various facilities here. After all, the entire city cannot Is it made of wood?

In the future, the residents here will mainly come from the Far East immigrants transported by the South Pacific route. In the early stage, hundreds of people may move here from the mainland a year, but don't expect more.After all, it still nominally belongs to the territory of the Kingdom of Spain, and the Spaniards also tried to colonize the Strait of Magellan (Punta Arenas) to consolidate the safety of this key waterway, although they finally failed due to various reasons , but there is no guarantee that one day they will get mad and send a group of new immigrants over.Therefore, for now, it is better to keep a low profile in everything. Secretly immigrating, secretly building towns, secretly harvesting wood, and then secretly transporting away to build ships, this is the kingly way!

(End of this chapter)