open sea

Chapter 1205 Mastery
Chile's desert is inaccessible, and now it has become a military restricted area for the Ming army.

The craftsmen of the Gunpowder Department belonging to the Beiyang Military Bureau of the Ming Dynasty sailed across the ocean and landed in Chile. They crossed the barren coastal plateau and entered this devastated desert, just like walking into another world.

In a world with nothing, every Daming person who arrives here for the first time will ask questions, how can it be so dry even though it is next to the coast of the Great Eastern Ocean?
According to the few local aborigines, the last time it rained was in the fourth year of Longqing according to the Ming calendar, and there has not been a drop of rain since then.

If a person empties the water from a jug, there will be more water spots on the bottom of the jug than the rainfall in the year.

The desert stretches as far as the eye can see, and even the cacti are unwilling to stay here for a long time. The top of the mountain looks like it is covered with snow that does not melt all the year round. Know that the top of the mountain is not covered with snow but with salt mines.

Even the most loyal and brave military craftsmen will retreat in their hearts when they first experience its unique landscape that makes deserts and soils dry and broken, and even the most arrogant people will doubt whether they can stand the test of heaven and earth.

Shao Tingda, the former commander-in-chief of the Eastern Army's military governor's mansion, has led the banner army of the headquarters to continue to open up in this desert for 27 months.

During the day, he and his troops walked from oasis to oasis with blunderbusses as sticks and single-clothed cloaks, measuring the road in the desert with the steps between their legs; Waiting for another dawn in a stone house built with cotton tents and oases.

It is not difficult to find nitrate mines here. In any place where you think water should come out when you drill a well, lift up the soil layer. If you are lucky, you only need to dig two feet, and the buried nitrate layer will be exposed. Even if they were unlucky, they only drilled a eight-foot well in the deepest time.

This is a world made up of salt, soil, and nitrate.

The military strength of the Governor's Mansion is constantly changing. At the earliest time, Shao Tingda had more than [-] full-scale troops. Except for the three important cities and ports, there was still a guard force that could be used as a field mobile force.

Later, they had no enemies with the Ming army here, and the natives were busy surviving after experiencing the disaster of enslavement brought by the Spaniards. No one cared about fighting with Ming. Different food and more technology.

Different from the focus of the Spaniards, the Ming army also cared about copper, gold, iron ore and silver mines. However, compared with hardware, the most notable feature of the Ming army is that they brought the concept that food is the first thing for the people. They are shameless Can't get enough to eat.

But the aborigines still doubted that after experiencing the nightmare slavery of the Spaniards, they no longer wanted to believe that the priests with scriptures forced them to live in houses for easy management, forced them to breed animals for the Spaniards, forced them to form teams labor.

Now it seems that everything is the same, except that the bald monks have been replaced by county magistrates wearing black gauze hats. They are also required to live in houses, raise animals, cultivate the land, and organize them into Baojia.

They were afraid of Daming's swords and guns, but they thought in their hearts that nothing had changed, except that the person riding on their heads was replaced by someone who looked somewhat similar to them.

The Spanish monks who are still wandering in this land said that the Ming people are different from the natives, they are whiter than you and us, they are white people.

But the Ming masters who live in Lier City said that Xiyi farts, I am a Ming with yellow skin and black hair, and they are the picky whites.

In doubt, the local people saw that the extensive farming and animal husbandry technology has been improved on a large scale. The port that used to be called San Diego is now renamed Lier City by Shao Tingda. Fishing boats with hundreds of materials were built for coastal fishermen to go fishing, and exquisite clothes were made in the city. and shoes, and sell stronger nets and boats faster and bigger than canoes.

Ming people said that this would allow everyone to get more food and get rich quickly.

However, three generations of indigenous people who had never owned personal property rights did not know what it meant to be rich. When the Spaniards left, the entire land stagnated, and the superstructure collapsed, leaving the natives at the bottom who were born to serve the Western barbarians at a loss as to what to do.

Shao Tingda can force them to enter the Chinese language school to learn writing and speech, but he cannot force them to correct the restlessness and inferiority deeply imprinted in their souls.

Until a certain moment at this time, General Manghu suddenly recalled the true meaning of Chen Mu's early saying that any nation would become stupid and numb after being enslaved for hundreds of years... Chilean natives have not been enslaved for hundreds of years , In just a few decades, they have become like this.

Even the Ming merchants in the city sell clothes and shoes, fishing nets and fishing boats, but the local people don’t know how to buy them; if they know how to buy them and want to buy them, they have no wealth.

So they hired proletarians to build bridges and build roads. People will be curious about why the Ming army is so. There are roads in Chile, whether they were stepped on by various tribes in the past or repaired later, or the roads built by the Spaniards during their time. There are all here, but the Ming army said that the road is not wide enough or smooth enough, and the more important thing is that the local people need this salary.

"Building roads so we can earn wages?"

"No, not only for you to earn wages, but with a good road, you can sell the things in Liercheng to other places, earn wealth to make your family live well, and help more people living in distress. good person."

"Caravan, sell to other places, just like the Spanish merchants in the past?"

"Yes, earn wealth like Xiyi, but don't earn money to wear ten finger rings like them. If you are poor, you must find a way to protect yourself. If you are rich, you must not forget to help the world."

"Then why do we call them Westerners and Europeans instead of Spaniards and Europeans? Because they are white?"

"Hehe, in fact, Daming doesn't care what color other people grow into, nor does he care whether he is white or yellow. We are not noble because of our color, but our color is noble because of our existence. The commander-in-chief said that we are born white and call ourselves yellow, only because of Daming. The people are all descendants of Yan and Huang, the yellow characters in it are nothing more than that.”

"Personally, I just don't want to be in the same category as them. They are the same. They are not degraded by calling themselves white. Look at the suffering of many tribes. White is degraded by their behavior like animals. , already treating them as human beings.”

The speaking Daming engineer put down the blueprint and wiped the sweat from his forehead, looked at the road being built in the mountains and deserts in the distance, and smiled with his arms around the shoulders of the native youth beside him: "When this road is completed, go recruit your own merchants." Team up, if you are poor, you will be good for yourself, and if you are rich, you will benefit the world. This is true for people, and it is also the same for ethnic groups and countries. We are the same, and you can’t be poor, so work hard.”

(End of this chapter)