Daming Crazy Emperor

Chapter 676 Unexpected Wealth

In the lord's mansion of All Saints City, the interrogation of the former lord, Count Alfonso, is continuing.

This guy was crazy at first, but now he is as obedient as a grandson, basically asking what to do.

There is no way, the leading generals of the Ming Empire and these damned mercenaries don't seem to have any nobles in their eyes. If he dares to answer honestly when asked, he will be beaten violently!
He was really beating, and he was still beating to death, as if he was not afraid of beating him, a nobleman, to death.

After such a beating, he became honest.

Now when people ask him, he just says what he says, but when people don't ask him, he just sits obediently and doesn't dare to move.

In the huge conference room, De Sierra and several of his cronies were sitting on both sides of the conference table looking through the seized materials, and Luo Sigong, who was sitting in the main seat, was staring at the map of the Brazilian governorate, frowning and meditating.

This thing seems to be a bit troublesome.

Luo Sigong frowned and stared at the map for a while, then slowly raised his head.

At this moment, the colony of Natal should be considered to be under their control, because there are not many lords stationed here, and the city of All Saints has also been taken by them. As for the surrounding farms, he also sent more than ten men. Hundreds of households went to receive them with a brigade.

In other words, he has almost completed this first mission, and there will be no problem with the follow-up army even if they rush over now.

At this moment, Qi Panzong also took the Dongyang Navy fleet back to report, and there were only ten Aegis ships and 120 Spike warships left at the port dock to guard there.

Perhaps, he shouldn't be in such a hurry to let Qi Panzong lead the fleet back, because from the captured map, it seems impossible to go by land!
Luo Sigong sighed secretly, and then asked: "Why are there no land passages between your territories? Is it because of the terrain or because there are Indian tribes in the middle?"

This is really a bit strange, because there are very few land passages marked between more than a dozen colonial territories in the Brazilian Governorate, and Natal has no land passages leading to other territories.

After listening to De Sierra's translation, Alfonso quickly explained: "We can't do anything about it, because there are primitive jungles everywhere here, and there are Indian tribes everywhere in the jungle, basically all the territories are given by the primitive jungles. Surrounded, it is too difficult for us to open up land passages."

No way?
Luo Sigong looked at the map carefully again, with a hint of doubt on his face.

The area marked in detail on this map is less than [-]% of the entire Brazilian Governor-General's jurisdiction, and all of them are areas close to the coastline, and other places are basically blank.

Could it be that more than [-]% of the remaining area is primeval jungle?
He thought for a while, and then asked: "You said you couldn't open up a land passage. How did you settle the border? You can't get through it. Why did you put such a large area into the Brazilian Governor-General's jurisdiction?"

Uh, I'm afraid you haven't robbed the colony, have you?
This colony is our territory before we saw it first!

Alfonso could only explain carefully: "These are areas that we have sent ships to explore. No other country in Europe has ever set foot in these areas, so naturally they belong to our Governor-General of Brazil."

Hearing this, Luo Sigong looked at the map carefully again, only to find that there were still winding rivers in the blank areas on the map, but there were no marks on both sides of these rivers.

Maybe this guy here is a brief map of the Governor-General of Brazil, and a more detailed map should be in the hands of the Governor-General, the Duke of Braganza.

He thought for a while, and then asked: "The unmarked areas on this map are all primeval jungles?"

Alfonso nodded without hesitation and said, "Yes, all unmarked areas are primeval jungles."

My God, more than [-]% of such a large area is virgin jungle, is it possible?
This will only be explored later.

Luo Sigong thought for a while and asked again: "Do you know what kind of mineral deposits are in the Brazilian Governor-General's jurisdiction and where are they roughly located?"

The emperor also confessed before coming here that they had better find out where the mines are here, as if the iron mines here are the most in the whole America and even the whole world.

Unexpectedly, Alfonso shook his head slightly and said, "There doesn't seem to be any mineral deposits in the Governor's area of ​​Brazil."

Oh, how dare you be dishonest, I'm afraid you were not beaten hard enough!

Luo Sigong couldn't help snorting coldly: "Don't think we don't know, there are a lot of iron mines here, how dare you be dishonest?"

Alfonso trembled when he heard the words: "Iron ore? The iron ore seems to be near Rio de Janeiro in the south. That thing is worthless, and the Spaniards let us mine it all the time. We have never made money from that thing." .”

Is iron ore worthless?

You don't get rich by robbing mines, what do you rely on?
It was the first time he heard this new talk.

Luo Sigong was puzzled and said: "Do you mean that you have occupied such a large colony without finding any valuable mineral deposits? Then how do you make money, relying on the sugarcane you planted on the farm?"

In fact, the sugar business in Europe is indeed very profitable at the moment.

Because many foods in Continental contain sugar, such as bread, biscuits, milk tea, coffee, etc., sucrose is an important seasoning for them.

Moreover, the Continent itself does not produce sucrose, and if you want to eat sucrose, you can only grow it in these tropical colonies.

Hearing this, Alfonso couldn't help saying weakly: "This sucrose can indeed make some money, but we don't mainly rely on it to make money."

Luo Sigong couldn't help asking: "Then how do you make money?"

Originally, he wasn't in such a hurry to find out how he made money, but now that he's asked this question, he naturally had to follow the trend.

Unexpectedly, Alfonso was puzzled and said: "We rely on Brazil to make money, don't you all know that?"

Uh, making money off Brazil?
What does this mean?
It seems reasonable to say that colonial Brazil relied on Brazil to make money.

However, this is the same as saying nothing!

Are you taking off your pants and farting?

Luo Sigong couldn't help asking curiously: "What does Brazil mean?"

It was not Alfonso who asked this question, but De Sierra who was translating on the side.

De Sierra said without thinking: "Brazil means red wood in Portuguese."

Red wood!
Before the Yongle Dynasty, no one in Ming Dynasty knew what the red wood represented.

However, since Yongle brought all kinds of mahogany back to the mainland of Ming Dynasty when Zheng He went to the West, Daming gradually set off a craze for making mahogany furniture, and the price of mahogany became higher and higher.

Now the prices of high-quality red sandalwood and rosewood are almost catching up with silver!
Luo Sigong is the commander of Jinyiwei, and he has copied countless corrupt officials and so on. He naturally knows the price of this mahogany quite well.

The Portuguese colonists actually made money from mahogany. This means that there are a lot of mahogany here?

How is the mahogany here?

If you want top-grade red sandalwood and pears, that would be a big deal. One piece is worth hundreds, thousands, or even thousands of taels!
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but a little excitedly said: "Where is the mahogany you collected?"

Alfonso said without hesitation: "The mahogany we collected is piled up next to the pier, you should have seen it?"

Uh, that pile of lumber by the pier is redwood?

impossible!

Of course he saw the huge pile of timber by the pier.

However, he didn't care.

Because wood is so common these days, and there are so many jungles here, it is normal for people to cut down wood and transport it to the continent to build boats and houses.

Daming is not short of wood at the moment. After all, Nanyang and Dongyang both produce wood, especially Nanyang, where many big islands are also densely packed with primitive jungles, so there is simply not much wood.

How could he have thought that the pile of wood would be mahogany.

real or fake?

Luo Sigong was stunned for a moment, then waved his hand and said, "Put him down first."

After speaking, he got up and walked out quickly.

Not long after, he brought a few personal guards to the pier.

At the moment, the pier and the city wall are heavily guarded, but the place where the timber is piled up is empty.

There is no way, the wood here is at least two feet square, thicker than a human waist, if it rolls down, it will kill people, who dares to stand near this.

Luo Sigong couldn't believe that these were mahogany.

Such a thick piece, if it is really mahogany, how much is it worth?

He walked up to a pile of logs that were taller than a person, pulled out his saber, scraped off the dirt from the break of a log and took a closer look, he couldn't help being dumbfounded.

It's so red it's purple, is this red sandalwood?

He quickly scraped away the soil at the breaks of the next few logs and took a closer look. They were indeed mahogany, and most of them were so red that they were purple.

My God, how much would it be worth if it was transported back to Daming!

Brazil means red wood, so why haven't you heard of Brazilian mahogany before?
This is actually not surprising at all.

Because the Portuguese don't know much about the value of mahogany at the moment, and there are many types of mahogany in Brazil, which are still different from the mahogany produced in Nanyang.

Some mahogany in Brazil are relatively brittle and cannot be used to make furniture at all. They can only be ground into powder and used as dyes.

As for these relatively solid ones, they are very good materials for making ship decks.

This is the age of great voyages, and many countries in Europe are frantically building ships, so the demand for deck materials is naturally huge.

Moreover, the price of deck materials is not low, and the profit is huge.

Therefore, the Portuguese are frantically mining Brazilian mahogany and transporting it back to the European continent to be processed into deck materials. The business is simply not very good.

The mahogany of Daming is all based on the root, and a mahogany as thick as a thigh can be worth thousands of taels of silver.

The Portuguese mined mahogany in Brazil by the ton, and they had to transport thousands of tons to Europe to be processed into deck materials!
Originally, there were a lot of mahogany in Brazil, but Portugal has been crazily logging them for more than 100 years, forcibly cutting the mahogany that can be seen everywhere into rare wood.

The problem, they are not using it for high-end furniture, but they are using it for decking materials.

If Luo Sigong knew that they were wasting precious mahogany like this, he would probably bleed with distress.

These are mahogany whose price is comparable to silver!

(End of this chapter)