open sea

Chapter 899 The Iron Factory
It should have been a very important thing for Yazhou to see the Western Army's transit and victory, but the Eastern Army's government from top to bottom, from Chen Mu, Zhao Shizhen, and Zou Yuanbiao, all did not stay in the county.

Temporarily in charge of the county is the ever-victorious defense system composed of pro-military generals Jun Song, infantry generals Shao Bianjiao, cavalry generals Hei Yunlong, chief commander Bai Tao, and inspector Pei Xiao, as well as border officers Fu Yuan, The border defense system of Lin Manjue, commander-in-chief, and Lin Huer, a thousand infantrymen.

No matter which part of the Western Army has illegal actions in the middle, the more than 300 excuses by the Western Army are more than 300 pieces of meat for this defense system.

It is wrong to say that we don’t pay attention to the Western Army’s excuses. The soldiers who often win ten times as much are staring at them, and the commander of the Fuguo Army is eager to try their hand at the Western Army. It's all overdone.

But Chen Mu and the county magistrate Zou Yuanbiao were not in Changsheng, so it seemed too contemptuous.

They were not in Changsheng at this time because they had more important things to do. The immigrant expedition sent by Changsheng to the north to search for new places discovered iron sand. That is to say, there may be iron ore in the jurisdiction of Changsheng County.

Chen Mu was going crazy thinking about iron mines.

On the day when he got the news from the immigrants, the port prepared three ships for him, and immediately led a hundred soldiers, Zhao Shizhen, Zou Yuanbiao and more than a hundred miners and mountain masters among the immigrants in the county, and the immigrants who sent the return letter with the expedition team took the boat to went north.

The place where the broken iron sand was found was in a small town thousands of miles north of Changsheng Port along the coast. It was located between Changsheng and Jie County, and four hundred miles to the north was Puerto Vallarta where Lin Huer led the wounded soldiers to rest for a short time. .

After seven days and nights of sailing, two gunboats and a lucky boat docked. The immigrant who was the guide introduced to Zhao Shizhen and others: "This is a good natural harbor. We sailed along the coast and disembarked here. After landing, we found that there used to be a Xiyi The military stronghold, but it has been abandoned for a long time."

"The tribes here say that this place is called Manzanillo by the Western Yi."

Chen Mu just got off the boat, stepped on the white sand beach, looked around with Zhao Shizhen, Zou Yuanbiao and others at the surrounding beach, which was more depressed than Changsheng Port, and stopped walking when he heard that, and asked, "Apple?"

Manzanillo means apple in Spanish, but the word apple just started to be called in the Ming Dynasty. In the past, it was called Pinguo. Local apples are better, and the name is slowly changing.

The immigrant nodded and said, "Yes, the Westerners grow a lot of apples here to make wine. There are also cider workshops in the aboriginal villages. It is said that sailors often drink cider to keep them from getting sick at sea."

scurvy.

Chen Mu followed the immigrant's raised finger and looked into the distance, but was blocked by the jungle and did not see the apple farm that the immigrant said, but he agreed in his heart that apple wine could cure diseases.

Just listen to Zhao Shizhen said: "A book obtained in Panama mentions that Magellan of Luzon once sailed for the Spaniards, and his fleet suffered from a terrible disease at sea, with bleeding from the mouth, bulging legs, and rotten flesh. Methods."

Others have things to be busy with. Zhao Shizhen's job is relatively easy, which allows him to have enough time to study various materials, making him the most well-known and memorized in the military government. To no avail."

"Bleeding, bathing with animal blood, eating sugar, and exercising. It is suspected that the foul smell, blood and oil in the pot made them sick. Some people ate mice, because mice could jump around alive and well on the ship, and they were once extremely sought after. One Rats can be sold for a high price of two taels of silver on the boat."

"I think it's the retribution for their evil deeds." Zhao Shizhen curled his lips: "Otherwise, why would we be fine?"

"Because we drink tea, eat kimchi, and sometimes we can grow vegetables on board." Chen Mu smiled and waved his hands: "Fruit wine and Yimu fruit will also be good choices in the future. Magellan has passed, and now it's the turn of the sea." We, perhaps future world history will say that in the year of Long Wan, Ming discovered the Spaniards, and thus discovered the world—how far away is the place where the iron ore was discovered?"

The flag army has dragged the horses off the boat, and seeing the ship approaching the port, the immigrants who taught the natives to cultivate in the distance have brought the aborigines to meet them here, and they pointed out the direction for Chen Mu. People rode or walked to Walk to the creek where the iron ore was found.

It seems that the ore lode is not far from the coast, along the river all the way to the east, it is not far to the place where the expedition team found the iron sand. It is said that the expedition team went east from Ping Township, which is the port where they docked, to find suitable land for planting At that time, the young people in the team were fetching water by the stream and found that the sand in the water was different from usual, which made people discover the iron ore here.

Although the distance was less than [-] miles, there was no proper road in the area, and the group stopped and stopped. It was almost dusk when they arrived at the area, and the progress of the expedition team was also very slow.

This is a team of no more than 3000 out of [-] people. The stream is called the Wetfoot River by them. People set up tents along the river. Most of them are strong and strong young people. acres of land, the main source of food is rations unloaded from ships and hunting.

People were extremely exhausted along the way, and the Banner Army was busy setting up camp and putting the rice grains into the pot, while the experienced potters and blacksmiths who accompanied them were full of energy, shaking their heads as they watched the blast furnace that the expedition team hastily set up.

Since there were no professional craftsmen, the expedition team took the hard-collected iron sand and iron soil and put them into the furnace for frying. Not to mention the little iron and slag at one time, the furnace made was also small. A furnace of pig iron that was smelted would only weigh more than ten catties, and it would be destroyed. The kiln is unusable and has to be rebuilt, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming.

But Chen Mu really saw iron. His expedition team hammered iron ingots in a stupid way, and produced more than a hundred catties of pig iron during the time they came here, so there is no need to talk about the following things.

No one wants to find iron mines in Asia more than Chen Mu, and no one wants iron mines to appear on the land under his jurisdiction more than Zou Yuanbiao. The two hit it off.

In the next few days, Chen Mu's personal soldiers left a group of bannermen to garrison Pingxiang Port, surveying the surrounding topographic maps; prospecting craftsmen went up the river to search for ore veins, and Zou Yuanbiao's aboriginal deputy from the White Horse Department was appointed as the governor of Pingxiang on the spot. , the primary task is to attract native people to build roads and conduct trade with the surrounding tribes.

Chen Mu also put in a lot of effort. Not only did he leave a general banner soldier and hundreds of craftsmen behind, he came here by himself without bringing anything, only 2000 million Tongbao money.

Among them, 400 million Tongbao were directly used for this 40-person expedition team as a reward for discovering iron ore, and they were ordered to offer rewards with the surrounding immigrant explorers and aboriginal tribes. In the future, iron ore and ore veins will be discovered within a hundred miles Or, each reward Tongbao 20 or equivalent goods.

Under the heavy reward, there was a brave man. In the following half a month, three expeditions within a radius of more than ten miles successively discovered traces of iron ore, not only iron sand, but also soil ingots. The bigger it was, the more delighted Chen Mu and his party were, and they started to send people from Changsheng to this place.

This place was also named Pingxiang Iron Works.

(End of this chapter)