Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 388 Lake West ([-])

April 1644, 3, sunny.

The calm Kamaquan River flows quietly out of the mountains, then meanders through large forests and grasslands, and flows into the vast Duck Lake.On the river bank, a simple wooden pier has been basically completed, and more than a dozen South African laborers are soaking in the slightly chilly river water to further strengthen the wooden piles of the trestle.On the other side of the trestle, the paddle steamer "Yiyun-015" of the captain of Ventura was mooring quietly.

Dozens of South African laborers are picking up the foul-smelling silt from the cabin with a dung pan, and on the shore, more South African laborers are sitting under the awning, making bricks from the river bottom silt.The finished bricks were piled aside to dry in the shade, and 200 meters to the east of the place where the bricks were made, a huge wheel kiln was almost completed.

This is a large-scale rotary kiln with a designed annual output of 4000 million standard bricks, and it is also the fourth large-scale brick kiln factory in China.Once this large brick kiln factory is successfully put into operation, the theoretical limit of domestic annual brick production can reach 1.6 million pieces.But in fact, the output cannot reach such a high level, because 5%-10% of the bricks produced by each kiln are unqualified. In addition to the shutdown of the kiln for maintenance and major holidays, the annual output can reach 1.3 A million horses is pretty good.

However, such a large production capacity is completely scum in the face of the increasingly strong domestic demand.Leaving aside the huge demand for various facilities such as city walls, roads, forts, docks, canals, reservoirs, etc., the gap in the huge resettlement housing is not a small number.Assuming 6000 immigrants a year, based on two people living in a house ([-] bricks), this is the demand for [-] million bricks.If the number of immigrants is a little more, it is still a question of whether the current domestic brick production capacity can keep up. In that case, the immigrants have to be organized to cut trees in the Yazihu ​​area and make temporary wooden houses.Moreover, the demand for bricks has increased, and the supporting cement, lime, and sand have to keep up. Although the demand is not as scary as bricks, at least the current production capacity is not enough, and production expansion is also necessary.

All in all, from now to the next long period of time, the domestic construction industry will continue to grow at a high speed.Whether it is ordinary bricks, tiles, sand and gravel, or lime, cement and some manufactured products such as cement prefabricated panels with a little threshold, they will all be in an environment of strong demand, and these industries will also be extremely prosperous. The earth absorbs a considerable part of the labor force.At present, some folks with a little wealth and some vision have begun to raise funds to invest in the construction material industry. The main way of expression is to raise funds to build ships, and then dig up river sand and sell them to several major construction bureaus under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications. The rate of return on this investment has been proven to be high.

This time, the Ministry of Industry and the United Industrial Credit Bank jointly funded the construction of a new large-scale brick and tile wheel kiln on the virgin land in the upper reaches of the Kamaquan River. , and obtained the materials for making bricks, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.These produced building materials are mainly used to build various facilities such as city walls, houses, reservoirs, and roads locally, and the remaining small part may be transported downstream by boat to support West Lake Fort and Dafeng Fort. building.

In fact, strictly speaking, a considerable part of the lakeside plain along the lines of West Lake Fort and Dafeng Fort has not been developed. After the new immigrants come, they can completely organize them to log and burn wasteland, and then continue to develop new farmland.However, considering the extremely limited area of ​​these plains, the people on the east bank will mainly face the large area of ​​hills and low mountains to the west of Yazi Lake in the future. How to develop these hills has become a very real problem before the Executive Committee.

For this reason, the Ministry of Agriculture once sent personnel to conduct long-term investigations in these hilly areas, and made a general understanding of various factors such as terrain, water source, climate, and soil.After a year-long comprehensive demonstration, they finally decided to choose a typical location for development to verify their own development ideas.The selected site has both abundant water sources and a suitable precipitation climate. There are hills and low mountains nearby, as well as small river valley plains, and the soil fertility is also uneven. It is the dream object of the Ministry of Agriculture.

This point is the area north of Krystal in later generations.The two rivers meet here, forming a small piece of rare valley plain, and the soil fertility is quite good; but to the north of this place is a large area of ​​hills covered with low bushes. Some of these hills and slopes have fair soil fertility, and some It is completely impossible to develop these areas, but it takes a lot of brains.

At the beginning, someone from the Ministry of Agriculture proposed to develop terraced fields here, and then plant various crops.However, on the east coast where the conflict between humans and land is not so great—it can even be said that there is no conflict between humans and land—it is unreasonable to build terraced fields at the cost of destroying the environment.Moreover, irrigation and water diversion for those terraced fields is very troublesome, and most of them can only be used as some dry land, which will reduce the grain production a lot.Instead of this, it is better to find another way and change to a new development model.

According to a rough investigation by the Ministry of Agriculture, the more fertile soil in this area is brown forest soil. The annual fallen litter adds a lot of fertility to the soil after being decomposed. In addition, the rainfall is abundant (but not excessive), and the soil is breathable. The soil temperature is also good (the soil temperature rises quickly in spring), so these lands are more suitable for farming, and most of them are concentrated in gentle river valleys.But for those hilly and valley lands, which are mostly clay soils, they have poor air permeability, and the soil temperature rises slowly in spring, which greatly shortens the growing time of crops; and the soil is often saturated with water and can only be used for grazing.In addition, the hills and slopes that account for the vast majority of the land are mostly sandy soils with insufficient water storage. Unless a large amount of fertilizers are applied to these lands and small mountain reservoirs are built at a high cost, it will be difficult to use them. .

After repeated demonstrations, the Ministry of Agriculture finally chose to plant pastures on these slopes and then raise cattle and sheep to make use of the resources here.According to their plan, if these slopes are suitable for farming, they will plant soybeans, and if they are not suitable, they will plant alfalfa and other pastures.To this end, they are also planning to develop a horse-drawn pasture harvester based on the horse-drawn corn harvester developed by Fengshou Agricultural Machinery Factory.To be honest, the difference between these two harvesters is not very big. The main thing that needs to be modified is the crop divider. There is no technical difficulty at all.

With a harvester that is dozens of times more efficient than humans, pastures can be planted on the large undulating slopes here, and then harvested by machines in a unified manner.Given the climate of Duck Lake, four or five stubbles of alfalfa can be harvested per acre each year. The forage harvested is enough to feed more than a dozen sheep or two adult cows, which is much more cost-effective than farming.After all, if you plant a field for a year, even if you harvest two seasons of crops, judging from the conditions of these slopes, you can harvest less than two hundred catties of wheat a year at most, which is completely incomparable with the benefits generated by more than ten sheep.Even if you grow high-yield potatoes, harvest three times a year, and produce two to three thousand catties, the calorific value of these foods is completely inferior to the calorific value of the beef obtained after slaughtering those few cows.

Therefore, from an economic point of view, it is absolutely the most reasonable behavior to plant alfalfa and other pastures on hilly slopes that are not suitable for planting crops, and then feed livestock such as meat, dairy cows, and sheep.Most of these hilly slopes have an altitude of no more than 200 meters, and a small part of them will not exceed 400-500 meters. However, they are basically undulating and gentle slopes, which are conducive to large-scale harvesting by harvesting machines.Of course, on some sloping land suitable for planting crops, the Ministry of Agriculture will also guide local residents to plant sweet potatoes, corn and other crops that are not picky.Sweet potato seedlings are also a very good feed for livestock, and the seedlings can be harvested repeatedly after the sweet potatoes grow to a certain stage, and residents can use them to feed livestock.In the same way, corn stalks can actually be used as feed, which is very practical.

In general, these hills and slopes are also of great economic significance to the people on the east coast.Once the cattle and sheep breeding here is on a large scale, a large amount of meat, oil, leather, dairy products and wool will be produced every year, which will also have very important strategic significance for the next stage of domestic industrial planning.With the rapid development of cotton textiles by people from the east coast, the market has been almost developed. In addition to further improving a series of products, such as high-grade dyed cloth, printed cloth, towels, socks, burqas, handkerchiefs and other products, they have also begun to prepare To develop another competitive industry, that is the leather processing industry which is already small in scale.

In recent years, people from the east coast have exported a large number of leather goods to countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Ottomans every year, mainly including saddlery, leather armor, ammunition bags, water bladders, leather gloves, leather boots and other cowskins and sheepskins. Products, creating economic benefits of more than [-] yuan per year.The rich and cheap raw materials provided by La Plata, coupled with the exclusive leather dyeing technology of the East Coast people, make the leather products of the East Coast very competitive in the European market, if the leather processing industry is a labor-intensive industry , and what the east coast lacks is manpower, so this industry on the east coast will definitely not be as small as it is now.

It is foreseeable that a large number of oriental immigrants will come to the mainland every year starting from this year, so the tension in human resources will certainly be alleviated.At this time, the development of an industry with comparative advantages such as leather processing can also be loosened, and the development of this industry can also indirectly bring La Plata into the economic system of the people on the east coast. The economic benefits and political benefits it brings Interests cannot be underestimated.

(End of this chapter)