Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1110 [Who is scarier, the Ming people or the germs? 】

It is said that Australians are descendants of British criminals, but this is not necessarily true.

Historically, before gold was discovered in Melbourne, there were only more than 10,000 descendants of British criminals. Just three years later, more than 100,000 gold diggers came, most of whom were American civilians.

Chinese are also one of the main groups of gold diggers.

There is no mention of those unregistered Chinese workers, only those who were allowed to go to sea by the Qing government. The first batch came with 1586 people, and the second batch soared to more than 1 people, including 20 children and 1 woman.

There were so many gold prospectors arriving by boat in such a short period of time that the Port of Melbourne could not accommodate so many ships. They could only stop at the Yarra River and live in temporary huts on the river bank before heading to the mining area in batches on foot.

There were more than 300 Chinese workers setting out from the river bank every day.

Since the Chinese were the last to arrive and too many of them poured in at once, they were naturally squeezed out by white miners from all over the world.

In addition, the gold mining method at that time was very primitive, and there was no professional machinery. However, the Chinese made all kinds of machinery by themselves, and even cut down trees nearby to make wooden water pumps. Their gold mining efficiency was the highest among all the gold diggers, which aroused the jealousy and resentment of the white people.

But the Chinese basically came with their fellow countrymen, and they were very united when they joined mutual aid societies. They went out to pan for gold in groups of 100, while the whites always came in groups of three or five. Could three or five whites beat a hundred Chinese?
What to do if you can’t defeat the Chinese?
The government then stepped in and drafted a bill specifically to suppress Chinese workers, and kept raising taxes on Chinese miners. In the end, nearly 6 Chinese workers protested together, and after a while, they achieved some results, namely reducing the resident tax of 4 pounds for Chinese to 2 pounds. The Chinese workers continued to protest, and three years later, the tax was reduced to pounds.

Although official taxes and fees were reduced, the number of miscellaneous taxes on the Chinese increased. The port tax for gold prospectors from other countries was abolished, but the port tax for the Chinese continued to be collected privately. New Chinese workers had to travel a long way to land and had to walk for a month to reach the mining area.

The Chinese workers made money and not only opened various shops, but also raised funds to build various temples.

Unfortunately, the temple was soon burned down, and white miners rushed into the Chinese community with muskets, smashing, looting and burning. Similar conflicts lasted for ten years, and eventually ended with a decrease in gold production, and most of the Chinese returned home with their money.

This is not the largest gold mine in Australia, so why does it cause such a sensation?
You have to know that the Chinese who came to Melbourne to seek gold were not pigs. Especially the second batch of Chinese workers who came by boat, they were the fellow villagers who were recruited by the first batch of Chinese workers through letters.

First, the natural environment is suitable for human survival; second, the local population is sparse.

Melbourne has both of these factors, so the gold diggers who came from thousands of miles away were able to survive and bring their income home.

When the gold in Melbourne was exhausted, the Chinese who chose to stay even changed their careers and became Australian farmers. To be precise, they had long since stopped mining gold and switched to farming, making money by selling agricultural products to gold diggers.

This is one of the most suitable areas for farming in Australia.

A Fujian sailor stood on the river bank, rubbed the soil, and said to Wang Chongdu: "The soil here is very fertile, and can be used to grow crops."

Wang Chongdu nodded and smiled: "If there is gold, and if you can farm, there is a high possibility of creating a gold rush. The gold rush in Taiwan has cooled down, and the remaining gold is difficult for individual tourists to find. It takes big merchants to organize and dig deep mines."

Gao Wenbao calculated the time and said, "From Guangzhou to here, if we set out in winter and the wind is favorable, we can arrive in about fifty days. We can also resupply in Java Island along the way, and there are not many storms. It is safer than going to India."

"What about the local natives?" Li Bin licked his lips.

Li Zuqia said: "It is best not to start a conflict first. Once you find a mining area, buy it and give the natives some rare goods. If they really refuse to sell, you can only occupy it by force."

Wang Chongdu said: "First, we can get a few nuggets of gold and bring them back. Then we can promote it in Fujian and Guangdong provinces. We can bring a few hundred people here as the first batch. We can farm and pan for gold at the same time. When we send a ship to deliver supplies the following year, we will ask the first batch of panners to write letters and send gold home. We can also call on friends to attract more people to come and pan for gold. We will not participate in panning for gold. We will only collect panning taxes and protection fees to protect the panners from harm by the indigenous people."

"What if the imperial court investigates if you collect gold mining taxes privately?" Li Zuqia asked.

Wang Chongdu said: "The court will not care about such a small fight. At least we have to wait until the number of gold diggers here reaches nearly 10,000 before the court will send tax collectors or even set up a governor's district here. Then it won't be too late for us to withdraw and hand it over. Of course, I will report this to His Majesty in advance."

Sooner or later, conflicts will come into play between gold diggers and the indigenous people, especially when their numbers grow larger and larger, as both sides will inevitably compete for limited land resources.

Are black pygmies considered human?
At least the short black people in Southeast Asia are not considered human beings. Whether it is Arab merchants, Indian merchants, or Southeast Asian and Chinese merchants, none of them regard the short black people in Southeast Asia as human beings.

Whenever they had time, they would capture pygmy blacks as slaves, and the Southeast Asian states were most enthusiastic about this.

In another time and space, the Nanyang pygmies who were scattered across the islands were captured and only a small number of them survived to the modern society. Their numbers are so rare that they are almost as rare as giant pandas.

It is conceivable what the treasure hunting trio would do in Australia, and what the subsequent Governor of the Ming Dynasty would do in Australia.

But they will definitely be much more merciful than the white people, because the white people are carrying out planned genocide.

All the purebred Australian Aborigines have died!
The so-called Australian aborigines in the 21st century are not real aborigines at all, they are all mixed-race offspring born from rape by white people. Even the mixed-race offspring are forcibly driven to "protected areas" and gathered into tribes to become tourist resources.

According to the Chinese nature, they would just kill and drive away the natives. The natives were driven to barren areas, and as long as they did not cause trouble, the Ming officials were even happy to educate the foreigners.

In addition, as the number of gold diggers from the Ming Dynasty increased, the natives' primary enemy was actually foreign pathogens.

The local natives had not yet realized the disaster that was about to happen. After repeated communication through body language, the chief sent people to take them to find gold.

After walking along the river for several days, we encountered another tribe on the way.

The exchange process was quite peaceful, as the two tribes were related by blood. In other words, several nearby tribes had formed an alliance to fight against the more distant tribal alliance. In the river channel about 20 miles east of Ballarat in later generations, the Ming expedition team discovered the first nugget of gold.

We continued searching along the river for several days but had no luck and found nothing.

The prospector simply took out the wooden sieve for gold panning and found gold sand in just half an hour.

In fact, if you dig along the banks of the river, you will find gold in the soil.

In another time and space, Chinese gold diggers were excluded from exploring new mines, so they only conducted secondary mining in abandoned mines that had been mined by white people. In addition, they cut down trees and made machinery by themselves, so their gold mining efficiency could still catch up with that of white people, which shows how rich the gold mines here are.

More than 100,000 people have been mining for more than ten years!
After selecting several places along the river to pan for gold for two or three days, the prospector said to Wang Chongdu: "There is something here, and it is abundant."

Wang Chongdu nodded and said, "The climate here is also good. All along the way, there is fertile land that can be cultivated. The place where we landed is a natural harbor. It can be used as a port after some repairs. When the population increases in the future, it would be best to build a shipyard at the port."

Everyone returned happily and had enthusiastic exchanges in the two tribes.

Wang Chongdu took out cloth and other items and exchanged them with the natives for a total of more than six kilograms of gold jewelry.

It was a bit difficult for the fleet to continue westward along the coast because the wind direction was very chaotic. Just now it was blowing southwest wind, but it turned northwest wind in a blink of an eye, so Wang Chongdu directly ordered to return the original route.

Therefore, the treasure hunting trio never went to the area in Australia with the richest mineral resources.

In fact, it doesn’t matter whether you go there or not. Most of the area is uninhabited, and no matter how many minerals there are, they are temporarily not worth mining.

They returned to the northern coast of Australia and found that the wind was still against them when they returned to Java, so they stayed at the beach for a while and caught various animals nearby every day. They killed or injured animals and ate them, and kept the intact ones and brought them back home.

The fleet finally returned after the monsoon changed.

During the exploration in Australia, forty-six people fell ill, three of whom unfortunately died.

Another person had his bones broken by flying stones from the natives.

Three people were bitten by the poisonous creature in Australia, two of them were poisoned to death on the spot, and one of them decisively cut off his bitten left hand to survive.

Li Zuqia also fell seriously ill and had a fever for no apparent reason. The doctor on board said he had some kind of leprosy and isolated him in the cabin, sending him medicine and food every day. After he recovered, lime was sprinkled in his cabin and all his clothes were boiled in water. The doctor said this was to kill the leprosy.

The doctors on the ship have seen this kind of situation many times. After all, they travel to various islands in the South Pacific all year round, and they even have special cabins for storing medicines.

Only three crew members died of illness, but the natives who came into contact with them suffered a terrible fate.

Although there have been aliens landing in Australia over the past tens of thousands of years, new pathogens that have emerged in the last few hundred or thousand years still pose a deadly threat to Australia.

There were two tribes with an epidemic. The natives lacked immunity and the disease spread to more than half of the tribe in a short time. Then, it spread to the nearby tribes, killing two to three thousand people.

There is really no way around this.

Perhaps something happened to Zhu Guoxiang and Zhu Ming, father and son, when they traveled through time. The corn and sweet potatoes they brought with them had mutated, and the modern germs on their bodies did not bring any plague.

The fleet reached Java with a favorable wind, where they repaired the damaged ships and purchased some spices before setting off again.

Some more goods were replenished along the way and all were shipped to Guangzhou for sale.

In Guangzhou, Wang Chongdu asked the crew to go ashore in batches to have fun and spread the news of their discovery of a gold mine in brothels and taverns.

He took out two more opal gems and put them up for auction at the Commodity Exchange.

This gem is so beautiful and no one has ever seen it before.

The two opals were sold at a total price of 950 guan in Guangzhou. The first one was sold for only 300 guan, but the second one was in great demand because Wang Chongdu only released two.

Repair ships, sell goods, advertise, buy goods, and set sail.

The goods purchased from Guangzhou were transported by Wang Chongdu to Hangzhou for sale, and at the same time, three opal gems were put up for auction again.

It is still early for the southward trade winds to arrive.

Wang Chongdu sent people to send the disabled crew members home, and the ashes of the deceased crew members were also sent home, and they all received huge pensions.

He handed over all matters to Gao Wenbao and Li Bin, and took Li Zuqia to Beijing to meet the emperor.

(End of this chapter)