On March 27, 1697, after paying a lot of money, the three-masted sailboat "Antarctic Wolf" slowly sailed into Motu Port under the tow of the steam-torched ship, intending to carry out a thorough renovation of the ship.

"Antarctic Wolf" is an old ship. It has also traveled several Pacific routes over the years, and has been to Ningbo, Guangzhou, Tokyo (Vietnam), Rabaul, Australia and other places, making great contributions to the business of the Yu family. Today, this trip to mainland China is probably the last long-range voyage of the Antarctic Wolf. After completing this trip, the ship will be processed to others at a low price. In the future, it will probably run some short-distance transportation offshore off the east coast until it is completely retired and dismantled.

Sailing wooden boats still have a huge market even on the east coast where shipbuilding technology is changing with each passing day. Because they are fast-constructed, low-priced, and not complicated to maintain, they still play their role in the shipping industry on the east coast. If you want to truly eliminate sailing wooden boats, you don’t know how to be the year of the monkey and horse month. After all, the timber resources on the east coast are too rich and too cheap. People are always greedy for cheap, especially for small businessmen who start businesses and travel.

At present, in the East Coast, large state-owned transportation companies have basically begun to use new ships and new technologies. For example, the largest South China Sea Transportation Company has an increasing number of steel ships, and the number of mixed iron and wood ships is even more. The East African Transportation Company is ranked behind, and the Caribbean Shipping Company has only two or three big cats, which is far inferior to the former. However, even the South China Sea Transportation Company has the advantage of the number of sailing wooden ships, and they are still using these ships to travel far and wide. Updates are not something that can be completed overnight, and even if the company completes the renewal, the eliminated wooden ships cannot be dismantled on the spot. There are more companies or individuals in China who want to take over, and wooden ships will still play an important role.

The above is still relatively wealthy and developed east coast. Most of the people sailing on the water are wooden ships. The Antarctic Wolf has been docked in Jinhua Port in Tahiti before, and their body is considered large in the local area. As a sparsely populated island colony, the Tahiti Management Committee is filled with unpowered wooden ships of dozens of tons and hundreds of tons. There are very few powered ships, and most of them are controlled by the government, such as the steam tugboats at the wharf, naval patrol ships (fifty tons, equipped with ten old artillery guns), etc. The shipping power is not very strong, but it is really enough for the local area.

The situation in the jurisdiction of the Rabaul Management Committee is slightly better than that of Tahiti. After all, it has a larger population and a more developed economy. There are currently two cities in this overseas colony, namely Rabaul Port and Motu Port (later Moresby Port). The former gathers most of the population and the environment is better. The latter was bought from the indigenous people. Not to mention the harsh environment, the economy is also bleak, because passing ships like to replenish freshwater, food, and repair ships in Rabaul.

However, in recent years, the local government has increasingly realized the cross-center position of the Rabaul Management Committee in various routes on the east coast, so it has successively invested a lot of resources for development. Although most of these resources have been invested in the area of ​​Rabaul Port, Motu Port, as the only two cities in the region, has naturally been divided into some soup and has improved a lot of life.

Just two months before the "Antarctic Wolf" arrived at Motu Port, the local government had just sent an expedition team affiliated to the Ministry of Geology. The expedition team is currently surveillance along the coastline of New Guinea Island and has not returned yet, but according to the information that has been sent back, it is not very ideal.

The broken island of New Guinea is large enough, but it is really bad. First of all, this island is located in a fragile zone of the earth's crust, with volcanoes everywhere, frequent earthquakes, and it is not suitable for humans to live and develop stably. Secondly, the island is full of cliffs and sharp ridges, and landslides can be seen at any time and anywhere. The valley is narrow and steep and the water flows are turbulent. The existence of geological fault zones has caused canyons and waterfalls to appear on many rivers. These rivers rushed down to the low places at extremely fast speeds and cut down largely the plains, making it very rare to have a flat land of slightly large scale on the island. After all, this large island is too young! Most orogenic movements were formed during a period of intense geological structure and volcanic activities about 15 million years ago.

In later generations, one expedition after another was shuttled through the Arctic and South Pole areas of the earth. However, in the central highlands of New Guinea Island, people are still interested in it. This is probably one of the most rugged places in the world. At the same time, tropical vegetation is spreading, forming a green desert. The swamps also brought huge numbers of malaria mosquitoes and poisonous snakes to explorers, making one brave explorer die here or sigh.

Of course, people on the east coast are not interested in using human lives to develop the entire island. They mainly plan to find areas that can be developed in the low places around the island. In addition, the volcanic island arc area along the island (the later Bismarck Islands, the Solomon Islands, etc.) are also key areas for development. In short, it is easy to choose the ones that are easy, and there is no need to use human lives to deal with the environment, which is not worth it.

The main southern coast selected by people on the east coast is that the large tracts of the north coast are cliffs formed by mountains and steep cliffs formed by mountains and ridges that penetrate the coast, making it difficult for people to get ashore. In addition, there are also lack of safe havens with excellent conditions, and there are many rising coral reefs hidden under the sea, which is not conducive to ship navigation. Even if there are a few places without these disadvantages, the hinterland is mostly rugged and steep, and has no value.

In short, New Guinea Island has a steep north and sunken south, and the south coast is more valuable for development than the north coast. And most importantly, there are some rivers on the south coast that can navigate to inland areas, such as the Sepik River, and small boats can navigate to hundreds of kilometers upstream. This is a huge advantage. You should know that most of the rivers on New Guinea Island cannot even navigate to small boats.

It was completely accidental for the East Coast people to choose Motu Port as the outpost for the development of New Guinea Island. First of all, there were a large number of indigenous people (i.e. Motu people) living here, and they had traded with East Coast merchants for many years. The East Coast people were familiar with this place. Later, due to a series of factors, these indigenous people and East Coast people had a great fight. The indigenous people suffered heavy casualties and injured, and the rest gradually became vassals of the East Coast people. Then, it was the matter of land redemption. The East Coast people used supplies worth 1,000 yuan to buy this port and a large area of ​​nearby land from the remaining Motu people, and immigrated here, and started to operate as an important stronghold.

However, the leaders of the Rabaul Management Committee still thought it was too simple. The environment here is harsh and the infrastructure is poor, so almost no one is willing to immigrate. In addition, the local Motu people were killed too much before, and the rest are currently moving away. It is almost impossible for people on the East Coast to get enough coolies to work, so neither merchants nor civilians are willing to come here to suffer.

In no way, the government took the lead in setting an example. After the Rabaul Management Committee voted collectively, it decided to move the government away from the relatively comfortable Rabaul Port and use Motu Port as its new capital. In this way, many people would have to come if they didn't come, especially the families of soldiers and government officials. At present, about 2,000 East Coast people have settled in Motu Port and look like an administrative center. As for Rabaul, it is now a commercial city, with several coconut factories, sabi factories, building materials factories, and cigarette factories in the area. At the same time, there are shops, restaurants, and hotels opened by mainland immigrants, with a population of more than 10,000 (including many mixed-race Melanesians).

However, although Rabaul is so prosperous and prosperous, the people living on the east coast of the local area are actually not satisfied. Many wealthy businessmen or engineers send their children to Australia in the south to study, working or doing business locally, which shows that the local environment is not very attractive.

The Rabaul Management Committee also saw this, so they made some efforts. First, Motu Port built a new beautiful villa area, which was for government officials, soldiers and engineers to live in. The community environment is relatively good, and the incidence of various diseases is very low. At the same time, the Management Committee also set aside a limited amount of 30,000 yuan, and cooperated with the subsidy of 60,000 yuan from the Immigration Department, intending to build a high-standard hospital here to serve the East Coast colonial settlers. The hospital imitated the famous local Ping An Memorial Hospital and even its name was named Motu Memorial Hospital, but the scale was much smaller to save funds.

At the same time, the school's education was also put on the agenda. They hired many teachers from local high salaries, and government financed funds to build a Motu Complete Primary School covering kindergartens in the western suburbs of Motu Port to provide basic education to the children of residents in the city. This is a very important part because it can effectively reduce population loss.

Of course, the means to reduce population loss are not only this, but the most important thing is to make people have jobs and income. Therefore, local industry and commerce have also developed recently. First, they introduced rubber trees in Motu Port and started planting them. There are rare plains here. After the people on the east coast drained the water from the swamp, they opened up many plantations of different sizes.

The labor force in the plantation was mainly Motu people, which forced the East Coast people to send troops to conquer the surrounding tribes and capture slaves. The slaves worked in the plantation, taking care of coconuts, rubber and a small amount of Robusta coffee trees to obtain a meager income, which brought some improvement to the originally dead economy of the local area.

Of course, there are also some farmers engaged in grain planting outside the city. These are immigrants who were "deadly" detained by the Rabaul Management Committee, and there are also a small number of military households and families who were abolished by Denglai. They mainly grow sweet potatoes, but this is not easy, because the climate here is changing. Sometimes it is hot and does not rain for many consecutive days, and the sweet potato vines will wither and reduce their yields soon. People have to carry out artificial irrigation every day, but it is not effective in many cases.

In such an unfriendly situation, farmers had to raise some poultry or livestock to increase their income. Take pigs as an example. Due to the lack of labor, most of the pigs in the villages are free-range. When outsiders look at it, they can find that these pigs are dirty, thin, ugly, but wild. You can know that these pigs are not changed. They are the big white pigs introduced from Europe. They have always been known for their willingness to grow meat, but now they are no different from wild boars, and there is no one else.

The number of pigs is about half that of humans, there are still many parasitic diseases, and there are lack of sufficient veterinarians in the local area, so the number growth is very slow. When a sow produces, a litter often has only 2-4 piglets, and the mortality rate is very high, which troubles local farmers.

Basically, pigs are a symbol of wealth in the local area, and are commodities that people use to exchange for money for urban residents. When marrying in rural areas, pigs are also an important part of the bride’s value. They are equal to bank deposits and are real hard currency. But if you want to survive by eating pork, it is a joke. Most of the current food in Motu Port still needs to be imported from Rabaul, and sometimes some wheat is bought from Australia, but the quantity is not large. After all, people are not very rich.
Chapter completed!