Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 999 South Pacific ([-])

The all-steam-powered ship "Tierra del Fuego" was towed into a special dock in the Port of Araucan for maintenance.

With a total output of 390 horsepower, the boat is, to be honest, not yet entirely reassuring.On the one hand, users complain that its actual power often does not reach the design height, on the other hand, it has lingering fears about its super high failure rate-think about it, if the ship breaks down on the sea where there is nowhere to go, then Maintenance is a very troublesome and dangerous thing—all in all, although two ships of this ship have been built successively, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and users have criticized it a lot, so the design of this ship type The manufacturer (Hyundai Special Ship Works) has been unable to mass-produce it, and can only take the trouble to improve it by absorbing user opinions again and again.

After the ship was towed away, Yu Xingguo politely declined the kindness of the brothers to go to the tavern for a drink together, but wandered aimlessly in the streets, just like what he had done in Jinshan Port.

At this time, the sky is not yet bright, but there are already two or threes of early risers busy on the street.Yu Xingguo bought two expensive steamed buns stuffed with pork and green onions from a food stall (the price of pork on the east coast is far higher than that of beef and mutton), and he devoured this "delicacy" that is difficult to enjoy on the ship while greedily enjoying it. The satisfaction of stepping on solid ground.

A few farmers carrying poles passed by Yu Xingguo, and the early vegetable farmers looked at the sailors with amusing eyes, and then hurried away.There were two ships on the pier that were leaving the port in the morning, and they had to deliver the overwintering vegetables to the designated place before the sun rose, otherwise they would lose money.

A smelly carriage approached, and Yu Xingguo hurriedly stepped aside. He knew that this was the person who had contracted to clean up excrement from public toilets in a certain street.They are generally peasant households in the countryside, and they obtain the right to clean certain public toilets and auxiliary sewage pipes through bidding. In order to avoid the smell disturbing the residents, they usually come to clean up after midnight, and then transport them in a horse-drawn cart before dawn. In the farmland outside the city.

"Araucan Port, together with Xingnan Port, as the two major capital towns attached to the South Railway, has indeed surpassed quite a few settlements in China in terms of development." The smell of meat between his lips and teeth, smashed his mouth, and said: "So many cities and towns in China are still waiting in line to wait for the special funds from the central government to transform their old urban sewage facilities. The Southern Railway Company is really good. At least Xingnan Port and Araucan Port have already considered this issue when they were built, and have reserved special funds.”

Of course, in the Port of Araucan, the Southern Railway Company did not renovate the half of the city in the Kingdom of Araucania. They did not have this spirit of internationalism.In the half of the urban area controlled by the "barbarians", the mess is still the mainstream, and it is simply incomparable with the east bank control area across the river.

After wandering around the street for a while, Yu Xingguo came to the pier slowly again. At this time, dozens of heavily armed soldiers of the South Railway Guard Team were already standing here. It seemed that there were three rows. scale.These soldiers were summoned temporarily, mainly to maintain order at the pier, because many Ming immigrants would disembark later, and some people would be agitated and act hysterically if they were not guaranteed, so they still needed to come temporarily to hold the line.

Newly arrived immigrants have to spend at least half a month of quarantine in the large immigrant camp by the pier, and learn some "rules" on the east coast by the way.Yu Xingguo noticed that a child immigrant on their ship was also in the queue. His mother died of illness on the way and was thrown into the sea. At that time, the child almost jumped into the sea with him. superior.Now seeing this thin figure again, Yu Xingguo can only wish him smooth sailing in his future life.

Another steam engine sailboat sounded its whistle and slowly drove into the port of Araucan.At this time, the dock workers had already started to go to work. Under the command of the employees of the Southern Railway Company who accompanied the ship, they unloaded boxes of goods from the ship.Yu Xingguo had a keen eye and found that many of the outer packages had words such as "wheat" and "rice" written in huge brush characters. It seemed that they were Peruvian grains brought over from Maolin City.

Even if he is not an official resident of the Southern Railway Subsidiary, Yu Xingguo, who often travels here, still knows that since the Peninsular named Raul Bravo came to the port of Araucan two years ago, he negotiated with President Mo about the After the import tariff, these grains planted in the south of Lima began to be shipped here by sea every now and then.For this reason, the Southern Railway Company even set up a steam milling line here, using cheap grain from Peru for deep processing, in addition to supplying local residents for consumption, and exporting small batches to the east coast.

Their behavior naturally aroused great indignation in the local business community (the tariff between the Southern Railway subsidiary and the mainland is zero), and even the Southern Railway Company with a strong background cannot withstand this pressure, so last year At the end of the year, it was said that the Southern Railway Company had quietly stopped its "dumping" of exporting machine-made flour to the mainland.

The cessation of the export of machine-made flour does not mean that other products of the Southern Railway Company are also unpopular.For example, the overwhelming seafood such as horse mackerel, trout, and salmon (all caught off the coast of Chile) are very popular in the local area. Now the annual fishery output of the Southern Railway Company’s fishing team has exceeded 1 tons, which is powerful and abundant. The supply of domestic seafood; another example is high-quality leather such as seal skin, seal skin, and sea lion skin, and high-grade lubricating oil such as seal oil. These are also products that are in short supply in the country. Luocha Leather Factory imports 2 to [-] yuan almost every year. Zhang "South Iron Sheet", which was processed and exported to Europe for profit.

There is also cane sugar from Peru. Yu Xingguo had vaguely heard that the South Railway Company planned to set up a sugar mill near the port of Araucan to process the crude cane sugar shipped from Peru and then sell it back to the mainland.This is undoubtedly another extremely lucrative project, and it is also of great benefit to improving the living standards of the common people. To put it in a darker way, if the East Coast Republic really goes to war with the Portuguese in the future, then Peruvian sugar can also be used as a A good substitute, lest Brazilians think that people on the east coast can only eat salty food without them.

Food, tropical logs, cane sugar, tobacco, cocoa, cotton, lead, tin and sulfur, and other Peruvian specialties, currently the Southern Railway Company’s annual imports have exceeded 130 million yuan, while such products as metal utensils, fertilizers, building materials, cloth, medicine, high-grade The export value of east coast commodities such as flour, wine, oil, and leather goods to Peru is as high as 150 million yuan per year.The Southern Railway Company does not know how much money it will make from it. Yu Xingguo roughly estimates that this figure should not be less than 60 yuan, and it is believed that when the Southern Cone and Ocean Railways are fully opened to traffic, the total import and export volume between the two places will be [-] yuan. will continue to usher in explosive growth.After all, people from the east coast have been operating the Peruvian smuggling trade for only four or five years, and the market is far from saturated.

"My mother's cotton plantation in Haiti, if it is not under the care of the old relationship, I am afraid it will be difficult to compete with Peruvian cotton and Brazilian cotton." The trade reminds me of my family's manor located in the interior of Cape-France, Haiti.

His mother, Mathilde, has been living in seclusion in a garden on the outskirts of Port d'Orient in recent years. His relatives in France have been taking care of things in Haiti. For example, his uncle Julian often travels to the Caribbean, and then By the way, take care of my own cotton plantation.It just seems that planting cotton and exporting it to the east coast is not a good business now. The competition from Peru, Brazil, and Florida is enough to destroy everything. This business is doomed to decline day by day, the family really should have made a plan early, wouldn't it be good to switch to sugar cane?

"Peru seems to be more and more unable to escape the doom of becoming an economic colony on the east coast." Yu Xingguo took out a pipe from his pocket, stuffed some high-quality shredded tobacco produced in Lima into it, and lit the fire Then he took a deep breath and thought silently: "A market with a population of several million, a treasure land rich in various resources, they can provide almost all the luxuries you can imagine, and the degree of abundance is unimaginable. This Isn't it the "super big milk source" of the East Coast Republic of China in the next hundred years? Through the dense cobweb-like channels, it will transport its own nutrients to the East Bank. While nourishing the East Bank, it will also exhaust its own future. Can there be a more pitiful being than the Peruvians?"

"The family should also have made a plan early. The plantation in Haiti cannot be operated as a main business in the future. The place is too far away from the mainland on the east coast, and it is too far away for something to happen. At the same time, there is a shortage of labor, and the efficiency of the plantation is always very low. The infrastructure that has been invested in a large amount of money every year to improve cannot be effectively used. In the future, the focus of business must be shifted to the east coast. I think the Southern Railway is very good. This time when I go home from vacation, I must have a good talk with my mother. "Yu Xingguo, who grew up on the east coast, has little interest in Haiti, a tropical island that seems to be far away in the sky. Unlike his parents who were born and raised in France, everything on the east coast always attracts Yu Xingguo's attention.

"Now our ships bring a large number of immigrants to the Southern Railway subsidiary area almost every year. These are valuable labor. Even if Haiti develops for 100 years, it is impossible to reach the current immigration speed of the Southern Railway. Just look at it, Haiti The shortage of people in the plantation is terrible, and the population of South Railway is so large that it has even begun to colonize southern Chile, which is simply incomparable.” Yu Xingguo took a deep breath and made up his mind to wait until the end of the year When he came home from vacation, he persuaded his mother to invest in the Southern Railway.

(End of this chapter)