Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 816 South Patagonia ([-])

PS: I want to hear more of your voices, I want to receive more of your suggestions, now search the WeChat public account "qdread" and pay attention to it, and give more support to "The Rise of South America through 1630"!

On June 1650, 6, it was sunny and the westerly wind was force six.

A few days after a relatively mild sandstorm, as the temperature dropped sharply, fine snowflakes floated in the sky again, which made Sandcastle realize that the harsh winter had finally arrived.But to be honest, the change of seasons really makes little difference to the [-] residents here (a group of Polish prisoners of war was resettled here more than two months ago).Because whether it is the hot summer or the biting cold winter, these settlers who are called "indentured slaves" have to work, and such days are said to last for seven years, which is extremely frustrating.

Xu Xiangdong rode a Turkmen horse and brought a group of patrolmen back from patrol outside. Before he could get off his horse, the deputy director of the left-behind police station immediately reported to him: half an hour ago, he came from the direction of Araucan Port. More than a dozen carriages carried a new batch of immigrants from the Ming Dynasty (immigrants transported by the Pacific route), with a total of 174 people, all of whom were adult men and women, including 116 males and 58 females, with a ratio of 2:1.Compared with the 3:1 ratio of male to female immigrants from the Far East in the past, this seems to indicate a fine-tuning of the immigration policy of the Executive Committee.

Of course, these Far East immigrants were not assigned to Sandcastle. In fact, their destination was Xingnan Port, a seaport city with almost one-third of the population of the entire southern Patagonia region. Among the many settlements along the route, the agricultural development has done the best.Since the first mu of farmland was cleared in 1648, after nearly two years of development, under the organization of the Southern Railway Company, more than 5000 mu of farmland has been developed in the Xingnan Port area, about one-third of which One is the "cooked land" in the second year.These farmlands have been planted with high-quality grass such as alfalfa in the past two years. The purpose is to decompose some unabsorbable calcium and phosphorus rich in the soil into absorbable substances through organic acids. A few years of grain production is also at the expense.

Regarding this point, the Southern Railway Company explained clearly to the local farmers, and provided special subsidies to these farmers so that they can improve the soil and accumulate fertility with peace of mind.The poor soil texture in arid areas should have required the care of the settlers. If they were extorted too much, what awaited them was that the soil fertility would be exhausted, and they would not be able to recover within three to five years.

However, it cannot be said that alfalfa is worthless, at least in countries with a high amount of livestock on the east coast (compared with Western European countries after the United Kingdom and Spain), this kind of alfalfa can cut a few crops a year and has a relatively high yield. High crops still have a broad market.Didn’t you see that the state-run ranch in Ranch Township, Dongfang County buys all kinds of high-quality pastures all year round? They dry the alfalfa harvested from the field, and then pack it and ship it back to the mainland, which can still be exchanged for some urgently needed grain.

This is what the settlers in Xingnan Port and even neighboring Zixinbao did in the past, but now they have a new choice, that is, with the development of the Peruvian smuggling trade, the Southern Railway Company purchased a large number of beef cattle and dairy cattle from Chile, and then Then hired gaucho cowboys drove them to Xingnan Port, which led to a sharp increase in the livestock holdings of local residents, which naturally caused a decline in alfalfa exports—after all, most of them were used by them.

At this time, some of these herds of cattle were tied outside the walls of Sandcastle. There were more than 200 of them, each of them skinny.At present, some Polish indentured slaves are taking care of these livestock. They use bean cakes from the local area, a small amount of oats from the port of Araucan, and weeds harvested by the river to feed them to ensure that the cattle are fattened within the specified time. up.After all, only after these cattle are fattened can they have enough physical strength to continue eastward and reach the final destination of Xingnan Port.

There are also many messy shacks built outside the cowshed. The shacks are very simple and primitive. The main material is a large number of reeds that grow in clusters along the Xingnan River.In sand castles deep in the Gobi, where materials are scarce, reeds are still a very precious thing: reed wadding can be used to stuff pillows and make cotton clothes (the god damn Southern Railway Company even gave Polish contract slaves Coats filled with reed wadding, quilts to keep out the cold), reed stalks can be used to weave various utensils, and of course it is quite suitable to build shacks—the duck coops and chicken coops of some farmers on both sides of the local Yi River are made of reed stalks.

Of course, in Sandcastle, the shacks are not for poultry, but for people—to be precise, for the Far East immigrants who temporarily rest here.After these Far Eastern immigrants landed at the Port of Araucan and passed the quarantine period, they were organized in batches and traveled eastward along the Xingnan Highway in a horse-drawn carriage, resting at Sand Castle for two or three days on the way, and then arrived at the east Some of them settled and reclaimed in the areas of Newcastle and Xingnan Port.

That is to say, on this immigrant transport route known as the lifeline of the Southern Railway Company, Sandcastle is the most important and also the only intermediate supply node, and its geographical location is quite critical.Here, damaged carriages will be repaired, sick people will be resettled, and overconsumed water will be replenished. In addition, the coachmen can also replace the draft horses that have lost weight, and then select horses from the stables that have been recuperating for many days. The draft horse is replaced to improve transportation efficiency.

At this time, along the outer side of the adobe city wall of the sand castle, there is a large area of ​​shacks with a slightly messy plan. Inside and outside the shacks live 174 immigrants from the Ming Dynasty who stayed here temporarily.As it was almost evening, these Ming immigrants, under the command of the Bingtuanbao student cadres who led the team, selected some people to go to the river to fetch water for cooking.

The Poles in Sandcastle took out some salted fish (mainly cod and smooth fish that are abundant on the east coast), cured meat (mainly whale meat with rough meat) and some shriveled meat from their inventory. Vegetables (the vegetable field I opened up by the river and stored in the cellar after harvest).These are already the best supplies they can come up with, and they are usually reluctant to eat them, and they are specially reserved for the past immigrants or employees of the Southern Railway Company to enjoy at this time - because this is also their job content and assessment items One, if you want to "reduce your sentence", you must not lose points in this item.

The Poles also brought over some fuel, most of which were coal gangue produced in Montenegro coal mines (due to the low coal content, it was smashed by steam breakers and sent to various places as fuel), and a small part was hay and bean stalks (Poland The people also opened up a small amount of arable land to plant soybeans and fertile fields), and graciously helped these newly arrived Ming immigrants to start fires - according to regulations, on the first night of staying in each settlement, all immigrants must take a bath with the soap they issued ——It’s like paying filial piety to these Ming immigrants as their ancestors, which makes the Ming people who are also born in a bitter haha ​​feel terrified.

After taking a shower, the meal is almost ready. Each of more than 100 Ming people was assigned two multigrain pancakes, a random stew of pickled fish, bacon and vegetables, and a bowl of thin fish soup—the fish in the soup came from a large amount of fish in the northern seas of Chile by the Southern Railway Company. The captured anchovies are too small to be eaten. Most of them are further processed into feed, and a small part is sent to various settlements as food for consumption.Although it was not the first time for the two hundred or two hundred Ming immigrants in front of them to eat these delicious foods, they were still so moved that they almost shed tears.

Thinking back to when I was sold to the "Yellow Thief" by the "Yuyuan Thieves" in my hometown in Henan, I was terrified to death, fearing that I would be eaten raw by these pirates (the Qing court propagated that the Yellow Thieves eat people's hearts raw), so I tried my best to Resist everything the thieves in yellow ask them to do, until they are overwhelmed by their raised swords and guns.But things in the world are often unexpected. Instead of killing people and eating meat, these yellow-clothed pirates gave them clothes and rations, and they were well taken care of.

To put it bluntly, some small landowners in Shandong, Henan, and Hebei who were forced to emigrate to the east coast all felt that the food they ate was not as good as the meal made for them by the thief in yellow, and that they had gone out of their way. .During the time of going out to sea by boat, the officers and soldiers of the Yellow Clothes Thieves did not do anything to bully goodness. Except for some female immigrants who were eaten tofu by some sailors during the watch on the deck, most of them were not disturbed and lived comfortably. Very, very impressive.

And they heard that when they got to the land, the government of the yellow-clothed thieves—no, people from the east bank—would grant them land, which shocked them even more.They all come from the Ming Dynasty, where land annexation was extremely serious. Of course, they know what owning land means to a farmer-that means that you will be a "good family" from now on, not a "good family" without any security and no status. Shareholders", all of this naturally quickly caught the hearts of the immigrants, and while they became extremely obedient, the immigration transportation work was naturally extremely smooth-for example, this group of 174 Far East immigrants, all the way. No one escaped without authorization, which was in stark contrast to the Indian immigrant transportation team that escaped one after another.

What Xu Xiangdong, who was wandering around after dinner, saw was the scene of Ming immigrants eating dinner quietly and extremely obedient.His parents are both time travelers, he vaguely knows a lot of things, and he is quite kind to these immigrants from the Ming Kingdom in the Far East.The Poles in Sandcastle provided these immigrants with good food and drink, not necessarily because of the pressure from him and Xu, otherwise you would think that they would entertain the immigrants with so many big fish and meat and vegetables that are very precious in winter ?Among other things, when a group of more than a hundred immigrants from Livonia passed through Sandcastle to the port of Araucan last month, their treatment was more than one level worse than this time, which is already very telling.

After wandering around casually, Xu Xiangdong returned to the police station.These immigrants will stay here for two more days, and after two days, he will take a group of patrolmen to escort these people eastward until the handover from Newcastle is completed. (My novel "The Rise of South America through 1630" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lucky draw gift for everyone! Open WeChat now, click the "+" sign on the top right to add friends ", search the official account "qdread" and pay attention, hurry up!)

(End of this chapter)