The construction of Zixia Island officially began.

Ren Ke quickly divided the group of people, and all the young and strong went to cut down the trees under his leadership, and the old and weak and the women, led by the escort, set out along an improvised road built when the traversers first landed, leveling the land along the way.

When the logs arrive, they will build rows of simple stilt houses on both sides of the road for everyone to settle down temporarily.

As for how to build it, Ren Ke is of course clear, he has practiced it on Wanshan Island, and the immigrants themselves are no strangers.

What's more, Ren Ke also has a secret - Hou Xianglin once handwrote a construction manual for him, which has detailed construction steps, and Ren Ke only needs to follow this manual for construction, which shows that Ren Ke is a caring person, and he has long been preparing for his overseas development career.

The inland of Zixia Island is a savannah forest landform, the grassland is the main body, and there are also patches of tropical rainforest, so there is no shortage of building materials.

By the time the men hauled the logs in carts to the vicinity of the wharf, the land had been trimmed, and according to Ren Ke's plan, it was the first settlement on Zixia Island, the prototype of what would become Zixia Town.

Only a few years later, the dirt road leading to the open-pit coal mine has been turned into a 12-meter-wide cement road, and the stilt houses on both sides of the road have become a row of two- or three-story buildings with reinforced concrete, and this remodeled road has a famous name - Spice Street, the small wharf of Zixia Bay, which is next to the town, will also become a deep-water port, and the adjacent Heishui River has become a canal.

At that time, the entire Zixia Islands became the center of the world's spice trade, and the economy was very prosperous, and almost all of these original immigrant families became the first generation of wealthy people on Zixia Island.

Of course, this is all an afterthought, and now Zixia Island is still a virgin land waiting to be developed.

In the following month, Ren Ke's various infrastructure construction on Zixia Island went smoothly, of course, a strong labor force is the key.

In addition, it is partly due to the full preparation of the development work before leaving Wanshan Island and the practical experience accumulated by Ren Ke in organizing the development of Wanshan Island.

By mid-May, the infrastructure of Zixia Town's residential areas, roads, and dock squares had been fully completed, and the migrants who had initially settled down began to prepare for ---- official march into the wilderness.

Based on past experience, the main works at this stage were the excavation of water channels.

Once the main ditches have been dug for irrigation and the boundaries of each household's land, the land to be allocated will be demarcated on both sides of the ditches, and the finer branch ditches will be dug by each household who has cleared the land.

After investigation, according to the labor situation of each household, plots of about 40 to 60 acres were divided on both sides of the ditch as land to be distributed, and at present there are a total of 1,673 people, forming 321 households, and according to the different levels of land, each person will be allocated an average of 15 to 25 acres of wasteland to be reclaimed.

Obviously, digging a trench was a relatively large project, and in the following days, Ren Ke personally led the crowd to open four main ditches with an average length of three kilometers.

Fortunately, the immigrants worked hard, and in addition to infants and young children, more than 1,500 adult men and women went into battle together, and by the end of May, the ditch project was finally completed, and soon a square plot of land about ten square kilometers was formed on the east bank of the Heishui River.

According to Ren Ke's pre-announced land policy, this is the initial allocation of land, and in the future, if each family has the ability to spare, they are allowed to reclaim new land on this basis - of course, the premise is that it cannot be abandoned.

When these lands are specifically distributed to each household, the amount of land area will be adjusted according to the fertility of the land, the convenience of watering, and other factors.

By the end of May, a total of about 16,000 acres of land had been divided.

Ren Ke also demanded---- The area of land that each reclamation household actually clears and planted crops with within five years must not be less than 80 percent of the area of the block allocated at the initial stage, that is to say, in five years, each household will have about 10 mu of new land reclamation per year, so that after eight years of cultivation, these lands will become the private property of the reclamation households.

Obviously, this is because Ren Ke wants the immigrants to reclaim as much wasteland as possible, and does not want to see the immigrants get rich and settle down.

But in fact, it turned out that Ren Ke was overthinking, and he underestimated the enthusiasm of these immigrants for land reclamation, as well as the almost fanatical attachment of Han immigrants to the land.

Two years later, the Han families had completed the task of clearing the land, and by the third year, the 16,000 acres of land originally demarcated were no longer enough.

Obviously, the Governor's Office has been encouraging immigrants to reclaim the land, and the Governor's Office has very simple management procedures for farmers' land reclamation - the farmers only need to report to the land administrator of the Governor's Office and say, "I plan to open up the land, where is the location, how many acres I plan to cultivate---- so the administrator takes out a map to check it, or goes to the scene to take a look, as long as it is confirmed that it is ownerless land, a reclamation permit will be issued immediately, and then a file of ownership will be kept and then the farmers can start working."

As a result, many families with laborers continued to travel farther away to clear the wasteland, resulting in a sharp increase in the area of arable land and pastures on Zixia Island in a few years.

Soon, all the grasslands on the island were turned into arable land or pasture, so many families began to expand into the rainforest area, and with the continuous entry of immigrants, the rainforest on the island also disappeared quickly, and in less than ten years, the entire Zixia Islands area of 400 square kilometers, all the land that could be cultivated by these immigrants......

Back in May 1659. The matter of Zixia Island is put aside for the time being, and let's focus on another focus: the fleet led by the Pride.

After leaving Purple Island, on 21 May, the Pride arrived at the Red Docks on Mornington Island with the USS Feminist, Captain Teemo, and the USS Assassin.

After the fleet docked at the wharf, various winch tower cranes near the wharf began to operate, a group of porters skillfully operated these lifting equipment, so that the boom extended directly above the deck of the ship, and the sailors on the three sailing ships began to move all kinds of goods to the deck step by step under the command of Hu Xiaolin and Peng Qiang, and then put them into the net rope bag under the tower crane hook, and then the boom rotated to lift the goods to a cement platform in the dock square, with two rails next to the platform, There are several small railcar wagons parked on the tracks, which are exactly the same human transportation vehicles that Boss Luo and the others used to produce for Cao Limei's mine: hand-cranked light railcars.

Due to its lightness, flexibility and non-fuel consumption, this human-powered rail rail has become the main means of short-distance and feeder transportation on the entire railway line, and its key components: bearings and camshafts are now available for production on the third generation of lathes and grinding machines from the Dawning Machine Factory.

Although the so-called bearing steel used in the production of bearings is the carburized steel provided by Holley and their "United Metallurgy", strictly speaking, this steel is not the most suitable material for bearings, but this is indeed the hardest steel that Holley Quanzhenhai can provide by relying on and using the process conditions of this time and space.

As for the production of camshaft materials---- Huali they have also solved, now the foundry presided over by Quan Zhenhai has been fully on the right track, its technical indicators of ball milled cast iron have been close to the standards of the old world, three years, several young people in the metallurgical group have been working hard, and finally let them make a significant technological progress of great significance for the traversers.