September 5, 1644, Port Meilin.

As an important inland port and railway transshipment hub in China, the Meilin Port wharf was in full swing at this time. The management staff of the Railway Administration, wearing uniforms, commanded a large number of freight tracks to park at designated locations with sweat. Then more than 200 Shandong immigrants in brand new uniforms, wearing cotton gloves, unloaded boxes of heavy supplies from the carriage and piled them aside. Several military advisers opened the boxes and compared them one by one to see if there were any mistakes.

These are all supplies to be sent to Xiayihe Fort west, including brand new 32-C flintlock rifles, 41-year steel bayonets, barbed wire, hand-thrown bombs, and even several artillery pieces. In short, almost all of them are combat supplies. Just last week, the military headquarters officially ordered the reserve of the Army's 3rd Company, the already disbanded Army's 103rd Company, to be reorganized in Meihe Township. After the company was established, it will head to the West Canyon Fort area to garrison and train, so as to fully ensure the smooth development of the area and the construction safety of the railway passing by.

With the launch of the domestic western development strategy, the location advantages of Meilin Port have become increasingly apparent. In addition to the machinery and fuel transported from the northern industrial zone, all weapons, grain, agricultural tools, livestock and population sent from the southern region must be transported at Meilin Port, which has brought the prosperity of this Neihu port city built more than three years ago to a new level. With the continuous immigration in recent years, the population of this emerging city has officially exceeded 2,500 yesterday. If we include nearby Chuyi Fort and newly built Qishan Fort in the northwest, a new urban belt at the entrance of the lake in the lower reaches of the Yi River has begun to take shape.

In this urban belt with Meilin Port as the core region, industry and agriculture will be its main economic form. Among them, Meilin Port will build the production, design and manufacturing of freight rail carriages with Southern Vehicle Factory as the core; at the same time, the Vehicle Institute of Engineering Technology, which is also located in Meilin Port will focus on the development of steam locomotives. After more than two years of research, it has successively overcome a series of technical problems such as transmission systems, hook buffer devices, brake devices, pressure spring shock absorption systems, and other technical difficulties. Next, it will continue to solve the wheelset system (including axle cases, bogies, traction devices, etc.), tube boilers, bearing systems, high-power barbarian-4 steam engines, switch systems and more. Only by overcoming these technical problems can people on the east coast pick this beautiful industrial flower.

These things cannot be made with a slap in the head. To put it bluntly, as long as you have not been exposed to early steam locomotive designs, even if you bring more things from modern times, it will be useless. This thing is much more complicated than the steam power system on a ship. A simple braking system just involves multiple technical links such as materials, casting, machining, and transmission. The name of the Flower of Industry is not a waste of time.

At present, some travelers who have a certain amount of original accumulation have set up small workshops in Meilin Port, such as car body processing, anti-corrosion, and shock-absorbing spring production. They are rich and are directly ordered by a machine factory to a relatively backward hydraulic machine tool, and then recruit workers to start work. Such capital advantages are difficult for immigrants in this time and space. You must know that the cheapest set of hydraulic machine tools costs 300 yuan, and they must also be strictly supervised by the State Administration of Intelligence and pay a high deposit. This is not something they can afford to have not completed the original capital accumulation. Of course, these small factories can only afford to make up for the manufacturing of small parts to supplement the processing capacity of Southern Vehicle Factory itself. However, vehicle manufacturing and some parts with high technical content and relatively rich future profits are strictly prohibited from entering private capital.

The Chuyi Port, located only seven or eight kilometers east of Meilin Port, is mainly based on animal husbandry. The local residents are mainly backward Samojishians and more than 700 new Koreans. They raise cattle, raise government foster horses, and also serve as natural sentinels in coastal areas. In addition, they grow some crops in small quantities, and send some agricultural and sideline products to Meilin Port for sale at markets to earn some cash income, a typical southern rural natural economy.

Unlike the Fort Choi, the Fort Chishan, located more than 20 kilometers northwest of Melin Harbor, is much better than them. At least the large area of ​​land near the estuary here is relatively fertile, and the harvest will be quite good if it is used to grow crops. At present, thousands of residents have lived in the fort, engaged in agricultural planting, poultry breeding, fishing, ship repair and other work, and the agricultural economy also occupies the main body.

The staff again pasted the seals on the cargo box that was inspected, and then signaled the dock workers to load the cargo onto the ship through steam booms. The ships that were already full of cargo, under the command of the Port Authority staff, whistled out of the Meilin Port Wharf, which was parked by the ships one by one, and headed towards Milin Lake. The cargo ships entered Milin Lake through the Meilin River, then turned left into the Yi River, and went up and straight to Xiayihe Fort Wharf. After arriving at Xiayihe Fort, most of the cargo and personnel would disembark, and then wait for the arrival of some cargo carriages to transport them to the Canyon Fort to the north.

Canyon Fort is located four or five kilometers east of the later Cuevos Canyon. There are many small surface runoffs here, basically all tributaries of the I River to the south. The soil is average and there are not many forests, but the strategic location is very important. Less than 100 kilometers north from here, the Melo Melo region, the northern important town of Uruguay, is located in the west, the Yaguaron River in the north, and the Milin Lake in the east. It has a superior geographical location and good development conditions. More importantly, it opens up the Melo region, and then goes north along the Negro River, and enters the edge of the hilly area west of the Yazi Lake, thus connecting the north and south of the country through above-ground transportation.

Of course, it is still far away from the Famelo area. The first step is to build the Canyon Fort, the first stronghold extending northward. The first batch of about 300 immigrants from Shandong, Ming, arrived a few days ago. Before their arrival, five platoons (55 people) of cavalry had already arrived at the Canyon Fort construction site with their own equipment, protecting hundreds of South African labor workers to build railway stations and other infrastructure.

Most of the three hundred Ming immigrants were from Ninghaizhou, almost all of whom were strong men, so they were highly efficient in their work. They unloaded a large amount of supplies and tools from the freight carriage, and then under the command of several East Coast cadres, they began to build temporary residential wooden houses, toilets, bathhouses and other facilities. Now the East Coast people are not too familiar with pioneering and reclamation, so they have summarized an effective pioneering manual. Whenever they go to a location, they just need to follow the manual. They should build one first, and then build one, what to pay attention to, and what to add, and what manuals to be added are clearly written, and a process has been formed.

In the Canyon Fort, apart from some streams and a few sparse woods, there are plains covered with weeds. There are no large dangerous animals nearby, but in the mountains to the west, it is said that there are some vicious Chalua villages. They are protected by Spanish missionaries and have received a certain degree of military training and material support. The Spanish are not stupid, and they cannot be wary of the people of the East Coast. Although the relationship between the two countries is normal or even a little friendly - because of the Dutch, this does not mean that they will allow the people of the East Coast to move indifferently on their nominal territory.

Just as the Guarani people who supported the northern Parana missionary area against Brazil's slave-catching flag teams, the Jesuit monks who preached in the East Coast were also very concerned about arming the Chalua people. They installed several missionary areas east of the Uruguay River and west of the West Coast, and sent more than a dozen monks to spread their faith and teach the Chalua people to grow crops and raise livestock; on the other hand, they armed the barbarians by equipping weapons such as combs and spears from the La Plata area, and instigated them to confront the East Coast people.

These missionaries hated the East Coast government, which appointed the East Coast Archbishop on their own and tried hard to suppress the development of Catholicism. Therefore, in the face of the aggressive westward trend of the East Coast people, they began to slander the East Coast people in the East Coast people for occupying their land - perhaps this was really not a slander, and then called on these fierce Chalua people to insist on resisting, not to be intimidated by the East Coast people's army, nor to surrender to the East Coast people - because the East Coast people would send them all to South Africa.

The Chalua people's will to resist was extremely tenacious, but the problem was that their number was too scarce. Historically, the Chalua natives in Uruguay may have been less than 10,000, or only six or seven thousand, and they were scattered in a vast area comparable to that of the entire province of Guangdong, China. Although the indigenous density in the Negro River Basin was relatively higher, it was not much higher, after all, the base was so large. Therefore, in order to cause greater trouble to the East Coast people and curb their ambition to move westward, the Jesuit monks tried to persuade the officials of the West Indian Academy of the West through the relationship between the upper class of the Spanish Kingdom to prevent the East Coast people from crossing the border and reclamation. On the other hand, they also promoted the "richness" of the East Coast in La Plata through some merchant organizations, which attracted some bitter Gao Qiaoma bandits to "get rich".
Chapter completed!