Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 317 Immigrants Swarming ([-])

On June 1642, 1, it rained heavily.

The Portuguese ships had been away for several days.After some North Koreans and Japanese were removed from the 3022 newly arrived Ming people, after some bargaining, Shi Qingjie finally paid a total of about 90 yuan to the Portuguese for them.Among them, 86 yuan is the immigration fee, and the remaining 4 yuan is used to pay for the purchase of oriental saplings, crop seeds and livestock.These seeds will play a great role in the future, such as those lychee saplings. This place in New China is especially suitable for the growth of this kind of crop, and it will become a major local specialty in time.

In addition to lychees, there are also cashew nuts, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, etc. from the New World, all of which can be grown locally in large quantities.As for things like sugarcane, although the climate is suitable, it is too labor-intensive, so Shi Qinjie reluctantly gave it up for the time being.

After the rainy season, most of the outdoor activities in New China have stopped, but this does not mean that everyone has nothing to do.In addition to the construction of coastal defense forts and land defense forts that "can't be stopped even with a knife", the timber processing factory by the coconut creek, the brick kiln factory outside Xinhua Castle, the cement factory and lime factory, and the repairs near the wharf Inside the shipyard, there are busy Ming immigrants everywhere.After a period of self-cultivation, these immigrants have begun to be organized to do some work within their ability.They work everywhere during the day, and at night they have to go to night school to be taught some language courses mainly on common expressions in daily life, in addition to common sense of hygiene, precautions for living in the tropics, and government laws and regulations.

This communal life may accompany them for up to several months, until the arrival of the ship to pick them up to the mainland.At that time, people who are in good physical condition will be given priority, and those who have studied well in language and other aspects, and secondly, the government staff who teach them will continue to describe to them how vast the local land is, how superior the living conditions are, and of course the rules are also very heavy, etc. , With these contents, the new immigrants are constantly educated in terms of ideology.

Sergeant Kyle walked unhurriedly through the building.It was almost noon at this time, but it had been raining heavily for a day and a night, and it didn't mean to stop at all.Fortunately, the factory building for making bricks is built on a higher ground, and the surrounding drainage facilities are also readily available, so there is no danger of the factory building being soaked by rainwater.The factory building is a mixed structure of brick and wood. Part of the load-bearing walls or columns are made of bricks and stones, while the rest are made of poor-quality wood and thatch.The roof is covered with tarpaulin and thatch, and many small windows are opened on the surrounding walls. Most of the windows are only covered with a layer of oil paper, and only a few windows are inlaid with some glass. The transparent glass shipped over was lucky not to be broken during the long-distance sea transportation.

Bean-sized raindrops crackled on the glass windows, making people worry about whether the windows pasted with oiled paper at the back of the factory building could withstand such a violent rain.Lime was sprinkled in many places in the factory building to absorb moisture in the air.The rainy season is so annoying and the air humidity is extremely high, which is definitely not a happy thing for the more than 300 workers who make bricks here.Because the adobe made in this case has a high breakage rate during firing, and often irregular shaped bricks such as "bread bricks" will be fired.And this will undoubtedly attract reprimands and beatings from the foremen.

Sergeant Kyle glanced casually, and found that many of the quicklime sprinkled in every corner had been reacted by moisture.The air was so humid that even the walls inside the factory had grown a lot of moss.The dark clouds in the sky still had no intention of dissipating, and the room was a little dark. Sergeant Kyle ordered the foreman to light the brazier, which made the room brighter.There are five adobe-making factories, and this is just one of them. There are more than 1600 workers in the five factories making adobes, which is a huge scale.If they are all skilled, it will not be a problem to make nearly 4000 million bricks a year.Materials such as bricks are definitely strategic materials for people on the east coast, especially those in overseas colonies.There is nothing without bricks, do you want to get some clay and stones to build a city wall like the Dutch?

The more than 1600 brick-making workers are not all the Eight Banners slaves, their total number is less than 1600.Most of them were immigrants from the Ming Dynasty, and a small number of Eight Banners skilled workers stayed here to teach them how to make qualified adobes for various purposes quickly and with high quality and quantity.At this time, most of the Eight Banners workers have been dispatched to the mouth of the bay, where they are draining water in the rain, cutting down trees, and building some unfinished coastal defense fortresses.From this we can see how important it is to master a skill. Just like the Eight Banners slaves in front of us, they got the opportunity to stay in the factory building and lead apprentices because of their good brick making skills and fast speed.Instead of going to the virgin forest at the mouth of the bay to cut down trees, clear open spaces, etc. like their compatriots, you must know that this is a risk of malaria.

Most of the more than 1000 Ming immigrants here are women and children. After all, making bricks is not a heavy physical work. For them, these tasks are still competent.Sergeant Kyle observed carefully. These people were generally malnourished, the women were thin and shriveled, and the children were even more emaciated with prominent cheekbones.However, it can be seen that after a week of full meals, the complexion of these people has improved a lot.In the past week, everyone has been fed with three meals a day of sweet potato and corn porridge, and the children can get an extra glass of milk and a piece of salted fish. Compared with the gloomy life in Daming before, this day seems unreal.

On the one hand, they can plunder, fight, and exchange children for a little food that can survive; on the other hand, they have clean and tidy houses and clothes, and as long as they do some work within their ability, they can eat the sweet "taro" every time. And the golden "rice", the children can also drink milk and eat fish.In the eyes of many Ming people, even the emperor of the Ming Dynasty can only eat these things. Well, maybe the emperor can eat a few more meatloaf.Could this be the gap between the "industrial society", "scientific management", "productivity" and other things that the official who came to teach everyone said?

People say, "If you compare goods, you have to throw them away, and if you compare people, you have to die." This saying is also applicable today.Ordinary people are the most practical. They don't understand "Huabari great defense" or "loyalty to the monarch and patriotism".Even if these people in front of them are barbarians, so what?They give themselves new clothes to wear, places to live in, food to eat, and skills to teach themselves, and it is said that the leading officials among them were originally descendants of Yan and Huang from the Middle Earth, and shed the same blood as everyone else. No wonder they treat everyone so well, they really are their own people!

The more than 1000 Ming people in front of us have just come to the brick kiln factory for three or four days, and many of them are already very decent in making bricks, and their learning progress is much faster than those of the Eight Banners slaves.These people work 14 hours a day, of which 8 hours are working and 6 hours are studying.Almost 10,000+ pieces of adobe can be produced every day. According to the rhythm of firing one kiln every three days, each kiln can provide more than 40 pieces of various red bricks for construction sites in the New China Colony, which effectively guarantees the various constructions of the colony. .

Under the supervision of the supervisors, some Malay slaves walked into the workshop with their heads bowed. They carefully stacked the dried bricks on the flat bullock cart, and then drove the bullock cart to leave the workshop, passing through a long closed continuous road. The corridor walked to the wheel kiln about tens of meters away, waiting for the slave workers there to put the bricks into the kiln one by one according to the foreman's instructions, and then ignite them for firing.The fired bricks are uniformly stacked on a flat ground, waiting for the construction site to send people to pull them.

Sergeant Kyle walked around the entire factory building, ordered the foremen to change the lime in the room, then put on an oilcloth poncho, and accompanied by several entourages, he left the brick kiln factory and went to the adjacent coconut tree The wood processing factory by the stream.There are several logging camps under his charge near the timber processing factory and in the upper reaches of Coconut Creek. About 200 Eight Banners slaves log here, and then remove useless branches and bark on the spot. Shuxi pulls it to the downstream wood processing plant for processing.At present, about 50% of the logs harvested by the New China colony are sent to the mainland after only preliminary anti-corrosion and insect-proof treatment; the remaining 50% are dried in the wood processing factory, and the dried wood part They are kept for local use, and some of them are pulled to South Africa or the mainland by returning transport ships like those logs for use there.

Sergeant Kyle tightened his poncho tightly, the cuffs and trouser cuffs were tightly tied with rope, and even covered his face with a towel, only a pair of eyes were exposed.The logging camp is located on the edge of the forest in the southeast, and the environment is extremely complicated.Although many of the puddles over there have been filled up, but the heavy rain has fallen recently, and there are many places where water accumulates in the forest, which inevitably breeds a large number of mosquitoes. He doesn't want to be like the few Eight Banners slaves under his management who suffered from malaria recently. I huddled in the corner of the clinic all day playing.Although at his level he is eligible for medical treatment, but that would have to be a crime, the most frightening thing is that he couldn't be cured at that time, so the days to come will be miserable.

The wilderness was white, and everywhere was shrouded in dense rain and fog. The land on the bank of the river was a bit slippery. Sergeant Kyle and his team walked on the dirt road softened by the long-term soaking in the rain. , It took more than half an hour to arrive at the logging camp.

(End of this chapter)