Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 411 Yihe ([-])

Port Merlin, September 1644, 9.

As an important inland river port and railway transshipment hub in China, the Meilin Port Wharf is full of people at this time.The management personnel of the General Administration of Railways in uniform sweating profusely commanded a large number of freight carriages to stop at the designated positions, and then more than 200 Shandong immigrants in brand-new uniforms and cotton gauze gloves brought boxes of heavy materials Remove it from the car and put it aside.Several staff officers of the military department opened these boxes and compared them one by one with the list to see if there were any mistakes or omissions.

These are all materials to be sent to the west of the Lower Yi River Fort. There are brand-new 32-C flintlock rifles, 41-year-old steel bayonets, barbed wire, hand-throwing bombs, and even a few artillery pieces. All combat supplies.Just last week, the military department has officially ordered to re-establish the reserve of the 3rd Company of the Army in Meihe Township - the 103rd Company of the Army, which had been disbanded.After the formation of the company is completed, it will go to the west of the Canyon Fort area to guard and train while doing its best to ensure the smooth development of the area and the construction safety of the passing railway.

With the launch of the domestic western development strategy, the location advantage of Meilin Port has become more and more apparent.In addition to the machinery and fuel transported from the northern industrial zone, all weapons, food, agricultural tools, livestock and people sent from the southern region have to be transshipped at Merlin Port, which makes this Neihu port city built more than three years ago. Prosperity has reached a new level.With the continuous immigration in recent years, the population of this emerging city has officially exceeded 500 as of yesterday. A string of new urban belts began to take shape at the mouth of the lake on the lower reaches of the river.

In this urban belt with Merlin Port as the core of the region, the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture will be its most important economic form.Among them, Meilingang will build the production, design, and manufacturing of freight rail carriages with the South Vehicle Factory as the core; at the same time, the Vehicle Institute of the Engineering Technology Research Institute, which is also located in Meilingang, will focus on the research and development of steam locomotives. After more than two years of research , has successively overcome a series of technical problems such as transmission system, coupler buffer device, brake device, pressure spring damping system, etc., and will continue to tackle key problems in the wheel set system (including axle boxes, bogies, traction devices, etc.), Tube boilers, bearing systems, high-horsepower Barbarian-4 steam engines, turnout systems, and more technical difficulties.Only by overcoming these technical difficulties can people from the East Coast pick this delicate industrial flower.

These things are not something that can be made with a pat of the head.To put it bluntly, as long as you haven't been exposed to early steam locomotive designs, no matter how much you bring from modern times, it's useless.This thing is much more complicated than the steam power system on a ship. A simple braking system involves multiple technical links such as materials, casting, machining, and transmission. The name of the Flower of Industry is not for nothing.

At present, some people who have accumulated a certain amount of primitive accumulation have set up small workshops in Meilingang, such as the processing of carriage bodies, anti-corrosion, such as the production of shock-absorbing springs, etc.They were rich and powerful, and they directly ordered some relatively backward hydraulic machine tools from a machine factory, and then recruited workers to start work.This kind of capital advantage is difficult for the immigrants in this time and space to compare. You must know that the cheapest price of a set of hydraulic machine tools is [-] yuan.This is not something they can afford if they have not yet completed the original capital accumulation.Of course, these small factories can only afford the manufacture of some small parts to supplement the lack of processing capacity of the Southern Vehicle Factory itself. However, the manufacture of complete vehicles and the processing of some parts with high technical content and relatively high profits in the future are still strictly prohibited. entered by private capital.

On the other hand, Chui Port, which is only seven or eight kilometers east of Merlin Port, is more based on animal husbandry.The local residents are mainly backward Samogitians and more than 700 newly arrived Koreans. They herd cattle, raise horses fostered by the government, and serve as natural sentinels in the coastal area.In addition, a small amount of crops are planted, and some agricultural and sideline products are sent to Meilin Port for sale at the market to earn some cash income, a typical southern rural natural economy.

Different from Fort Cheui, Fort Qishan, located more than 20 kilometers northwest of Merlin Port, was much stronger than them.At least the large piece of land near the river mouth here is relatively fertile, and if used to grow crops, the harvest will be quite good.At present, thousands of residents have lived in the fort in the past, engaged in agricultural planting, poultry raising, fishing, ship repairing, etc., and the agricultural economy also occupies the main body.

The staff officers re-pasted the seals on the inspected cargo boxes, and then signaled the dock workers to load the goods onto the ship through the steam boom.Under the command of the staff of the Port Authority, the ships that were already loaded with cargo, blew their whistles, and sailed out of the port of Merlin, which was full of ships, and headed for Lake Milin.The cargo ship crosses the Meilin River and enters the Milin Lake, then turns left and enters the Yihe River, and goes up the river until it arrives at the Xiayihebao Wharf.After arriving at the Lower Yihe Fort, most of the goods and personnel will disembark, and then wait for the arrival of some freight wagons to transport them to the Canyon Fort in the north.

Canyon Fort is located four to five kilometers east of Kuevos Canyon in the later generations. There are many small surface runoffs here, which are basically tributaries of the Yi River in the south.The soil is generally fertile and there are not many forests, but the strategic location is quite important.Less than a hundred kilometers north from here is Merlo, the important northern town of Uruguay in later generations.The Merlo region borders the Negro River in the west, the Yaguaron River in the north, and Milin Lake in the east. It has a superior geographical location and good development conditions.More importantly, after opening up the Merlot area, and then going north along the Negro River, it entered the edge of the hilly area west of Duck Lake, thus connecting the northern and southern inland areas of the country through ground transportation.

Of course, it is still far away from the Famello area. The first step is to build Canyon Fort, the first stronghold extending northward.The first batch of about 55 immigrants from Shandong Province of the Ming Dynasty arrived in Canyon Fort a few days ago, and before they arrived, five platoons ([-] people) of cavalry had arrived at the Canyon Fort construction site with their own equipment. , to protect hundreds of South African laborers building infrastructure such as railway stations.

Most of the [-] Ming immigrants came from Ninghai Prefecture, and almost all of them were young and strong men, so their working efficiency was relatively high.They unloaded a large amount of supplies and tools from the freight wagon, and then under the command of several east bank cadres, they began to build temporary living wooden houses, toilets, bathhouses and other facilities.Nowadays, people on the east coast are not too familiar with pioneering wasteland, so they have summed up an effective pioneering manual.Every time you go to a place, you only need to operate according to the manual. Which one to build first, which one to build next, what to pay attention to, and what to supplement are clearly written in the manual, which has formed a process.

In Canyon Fort, apart from some small streams and a few sparse forests, there are plains full of wild grass everywhere.There are no large dangerous animals nearby, but there are rumored to be some vicious Charuya villages in the mountains to the west.They were sheltered by Spanish missionaries and also received a certain degree of military training and supplies.The Spaniards are not stupid. It is impossible for them not to be vigilant against the westward actions of the people on the east coast. Although the current relationship between the two countries is normal or even slightly friendly-because of the relationship between the Dutch, this does not mean that They will allow the East Coasters to act on their nominal turf without doing anything.

Just as they supported the Guaranis in the northern Paraná mission against the Brazilian slave-catching banners, the Jesuit monks who were missionary in the east coast were also very concerned about arming the Charuyas.They set up several missionary areas in a large area east of the Uruguay River and west of Xiling, and sent over a dozen monks to spread the faith and teach the Charuya people to plant crops and raise livestock; Armed these barbarians with weapons such as matchlock guns and spears obtained from the Tower area, and instigated them to fight against the people on the east coast.

These missionaries hated the East Coast government, which had appointed the Archbishop of the East Coast itself and suppressed the development of Catholicism. Therefore, facing the aggressive westward movement of the East Coast people, they began to slander the Chaluyas for occupying them. land—maybe this is really not a slander, and then called on these fierce Charuyas to persist in resistance, not to be intimidated by the army of the people on the east coast, and not to surrender to the people on the east coast—because the east coast People will send them all to South Africa.

The Charuya's will to resist is extremely tenacious, but the problem is that they are too few in number.Historically, there may have been less than 1 Charuya indigenous people in Uruguay, perhaps only 7000 or [-], and they were scattered in a vast area comparable to the entire Guangdong Province of China.Although the density of indigenous people in the Negro River Basin is relatively higher, it is not much higher, after all, the base number is so large.Therefore, in order to cause more trouble for the people on the east coast and curb their ambitions to move westward, the monks of the Society of Jesus tried to persuade the officials of the West Indian House to stop the people from the east coast from crossing the border through the relationship between the upper echelons of the Kingdom of Spain. The reclamation operation; on the one hand, some merchant organizations promoted the "richness" of the east coast in La Plata, which attracted some bitter gaucho horse bandits to "get rich".

With the establishment of the North Canyon Fort in the Lower Yihe Fort, the conflict between the two sides reached its peak in late August.For this reason, the cavalry battalion had to mobilize dozens of cavalry to go north again to stabilize the situation there. On the last day of August, 8 officers and soldiers of the 8rd Company of the Army, which was fully armed, also arrived at Canyon Fort. After hearing some reports, Lieutenant Long Xu, the company commander, decided to investigate the Charuya people in the mountains to the west. Prepare to carry out a military strike on it next.

(End of this chapter)