The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 37: Immigrants and Livestock

Liu Biao boarded a steam sailing ship and arrived at the southernmost tip of the Australian continent again, and entered the bay he had visited last year.

The steam sailing ship dropped anchor at the bottom of the bay, and Liu Biao arranged the first, second and third companies of the first battalion to go ashore first.

The third company was left stationed at the bottom of the bay to build a temporary garrison camp.

Let the second company cross the valley north of the bay to explore the plains north of the mountains, mainly to find out the direction of the river on the plains.

Observe and record the vegetation conditions around plains and rivers, and analyze how much land is suitable for farming and how much land is suitable for grazing.

Liu Biao personally led the first company to explore the western mountains, and actually went straight to the hillside where he discovered natural gold ore last time.

In order to "discover" the gold mine as soon as possible, Cao Zhendong and Liu Biao ordered the steam sailing ship to drop off three companies of the first battalion and then continued westward with the fourth company.

The task Liu Biao assigned to the Fourth Company was to explore the conditions in the plains west of the bay.

Now that Liu Biao's first company's mission is to go west, it would be better to use a boat to send the fourth company as far west as possible. This task arrangement is also very reasonable.

When the steam sailing ship returned after delivering the Fourth Company and arrived at the entrance of the bay again, Liu Biao had already returned with his discovery.

Liu Biao had people wave flags at the entrance of the bay, asking the sailboats to pause here again.

Then Liu Biao climbed onto the steamboat again and found the captain.

Liu Biao took out a piece of gold ore and explained with great "surprise" that there might be a large gold mine at the foot of the mountain more than 100 kilometers northwest of the bay.

I hope the captain will bring the news back directly when he returns.

The captain was of course extremely surprised to receive the gold ore and the report, and said that he would send the news back to his homeland as soon as possible.

The captain then said goodbye to Liu Biao and commanded the steamship to sail north.

When the captain returned to the valley where the royal capital was scheduled to be located, he discovered that the other three sailboats were no longer there.

The captain was about to say goodbye to Cao Zhendong and ask about the situation of the other three ships.

As a result, I got another good news from Cao Zhendong.

Large-scale coal mines were discovered in the north of King Wu's capital.

Afterwards, Cao Zhendong personally escorted more than a hundred Kunlun slaves and boarded the steamship returning from the southern bay.

Cao Zhendong ordered a steam sailboat to escort these newly captured Kunlun slaves to work in the coal fields in the Beihe Valley.

At this time, Cao Zhendong was also serving as the admiral. The first batch of more than 2,000 soldiers, officers and sailors who arrived were all under the command of Cao Zhendong.

The captain was very surprised and delighted. He did not dare to neglect Cao Zhendong's order and immediately drove these Kunlun slaves north.

Knowing that there was coal here, the captain started the steam engine and sailed, and arrived at the north mouth of the Wuwangdu River the next day.

Most of the soldiers from the Second Battalion and the sailors from the three ships dug coal in the valley for more than a month.

Then, the Kunlun slaves captured by the Fifth Battalion were gradually used to take over.

The soldiers and sailors of the Second Battalion began to be mainly responsible for on-site supervision and rowing boats to transport coal.

The steam sailing ship escorting Liu Biao sent the newly captured Kunlun slaves into the mine, and the last batch of Ming soldiers who were still working were also liberated.

The number of Kunlun slaves working in the mine has reached five hundred.

Five days later, the four steam sailing ships replenished their coal and returned with two pieces of good news.

After the four ships returned to the vicinity of Timor Island, a steamship was arranged to sail north to deliver the news of the gold and coal mines to the capital.

Three other steam-sailing vessels remained, towing other ordinary sailing vessels back and forth in the area, carrying ordinary immigrants through the calm and adverse current zones.

After the first batch of ordinary immigrants arrived at the royal camp, Cao Zhendong immediately asked the militia among the immigrants to watch over the Kunlun slaves digging coal.

After more immigrants arrived, Cao Zhendong transferred the tasks of building houses and farming to the immigrants.

Bring out as many regular troops as possible.

A battalion of regular troops was left stationed in the camp to maintain law and order in the camp and to serve as officers to train the militia and immigrants.

Most of the regular troops were used to perform more professional tasks such as reconnaissance, exploration, and slave hunting.

Finally, immigrant workers were arranged to repair the waterway and river banks of the North River to facilitate the entry and exit of small boats and rafts.

Over the next two months, more and more people came to the Royal Capital Camp, and naturally it became more and more popular, with more and more life atmosphere.

By the end of February in the 32nd year of Xianning, spring had already arrived and flowers were blooming in the far north.

The first batch of Australian immigrants organized by the Ming Dynasty, the first thousand households of Zhongwei Australia with more than 15,000 people, finally arrived at the capital of King Wu.

The Ming court also sent more than 10,000 livestock, including horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs, pigs, etc., from Java, Malacca, Borneo and other places to Wu Wangdu at the same time. Cao Zhendong specially arranged a hundred households to be responsible for raising and managing livestock.

A special 100-household unit was also arranged to collect human and livestock feces, urine, food waste, leaves, etc. for composting and fermentation.

Since we already know that the soil in Australia is barren, anything that can be used as fertilizer should not be wasted.

If we make use of all these things, we may be able to avoid possible food shortages.

With more than 10,000 immigrants, the construction of the official residential area of ​​the royal capital and the comprehensive development of the Beihe Coal Mine have also been launched in full swing.

The first batch of immigrants to Australia were blessed with surprises, as they immediately got gold and important resources.

With enough coal, there will be enough hot water and well-cooked food, and a lot of diseases can be avoided naturally.

It’s not that ancient people didn’t know the benefits of drinking hot water, but most ordinary people in ancient times couldn’t afford hot water.

Most of the mountains and forests are owned by someone, and going up the mountain to cut firewood is equivalent to stealing.

Unless the forest owner allows the tribesmen to chop wood.

In Zhu Jianxuan's previous life, it was not until the new era after the founding of the People's Republic of China that ordinary people finally had access to hot water.

The first batch of immigrants from the State of Wu numbered more than 15,000 people, and this order of magnitude is also very important.

This immigration efficiency and quantity far exceeded the speed of early European immigration to the Americas.

The famous Mayflower in history had a displacement of only 180 tons and carried only 102 immigrants on its first voyage.

The early European colonial activities overseas were extremely dangerous, and many of the immigrants were consumables.

Many of the early European settlements in America disappeared without explanation.

Originally, most of the immigrants were from the lower classes of European society, and they simply disappeared without anyone remembering them.

The main reason is that their number is too small, perhaps even smaller than that of an indigenous tribe.

The point is that there may not be enough reliable weapons.

So they might be killed by sudden attacks from natives who are familiar with the environment.

They could also starve to death because they did not store enough food, or because they had not yet adapted to the different types of climates in the area.

Cannibalism not only occurs in years of disaster, but also in overseas colonies where order collapses.

The ships that brought them to the colonies usually did not belong to them. They were simply there for transportation business and would not return visits or provide support.

Historically, the number of immigrants sent to Australia by Britain was relatively large, with the first batch including 1,500 people.

After the American War of Independence, Britain could no longer exile criminals to the United States, and it was only a few years later that it decided to use Australia as a new place of exile.

In those days, British judges were keen on sentencing criminals to exile.

In addition to eliminating local destabilizing factors, it can also carry out official forced pioneering and colonization.

The accumulation of criminals during the American Revolutionary War and in the years after the war made British prisons overcrowded.

So they began to use the navy to transport immigrants and criminals directly to Australia.

This led to the relatively high scale of immigration to Australia in the early days, and also made the survival rate of immigrants in Australia much higher than that of early immigrants from America.

Now the Ming Dynasty is investing unstintingly in Australia, even more vigorously than Britain's official colonization of Australia at that time.

Just looking at the number of immigrants transported in a single trip, they far exceed the typical indigenous tribes.

Two thousand regular troops, plus a possibly larger number of militia.

In terms of military equipment and organizational capabilities, they far surpassed any indigenous tribe.

Not to mention being attacked by indigenous tribes, the Ming soldiers would take the initiative to capture the indigenous people as labor.

Moreover, the Ming Dynasty's immigration ships were special immigration ships officially organized by the court, which would continue to transport immigrants and supplies to the same place.

Even if local residents encounter famine and are unable to solve the food problem, as long as they persist in hunting and fishing, they will be able to wait for supplies.

An immigration settlement of the size of the Ming Dynasty would be as large as a town and would be basically impossible to be destroyed by the indigenous people.

Even if the European regular army came to seize it, there would be no way to transport enough troops to participate in the war in the short term.

The current Ming Dynasty not only has a large population and a strong court organizational capability, but more importantly, it has already stood on the threshold of the Industrial Revolution.

Steam sailing ships were the plug-in of this era, which could basically offset the disadvantages of ocean currents and wind direction and started large-scale continuous maritime transportation.

(End of this chapter)