In December, southern Patagonia is already in the height of summer.

Outside the walls of the castle (later the town of El Turvio, Argentina, named for a rare swampy wetland on the Gobi Desert), a group of newly arrived Ming immigrants are busy with their work. At their side, a railway stretched into the distant sky, like a long dragon, rushing unstoppably to the east, disappearing into the vast Gobi.

After more than a year, Li Dayan, a senior editor of Pravda, once again visited the Southern Cone Railway and its annexes (which extended one mile on both sides of the railway line) to conduct interviews, but as for the content of the interview, his immediate superior, the deputy editor-in-chief of Pravda and the director of the news department, did not have a hard and fast rule, but only asked him to come here for an interview, find out the hot spots, and then come back to write a documentary interview.

Li Dayan pondered this explanation from above, and had a deeper understanding of some of the ideas of the Executive Committee in his heart -- the princes of the Executive Committee really have deep expectations for the Southern Railway Company! Although the financial support is limited, the support in terms of talents, technology, materials and personnel is not insignificant. For example, the construction of the fourth phase of the local Northwest Railway (from Tielingbao to Daxing Port via Linxibao) has been delayed a lot because a considerable number of construction personnel have transferred the southern cone railway to the south, and as for the Southwest Railway, which has just been repaired, it is even more far away, and it is estimated that there will be a large-scale start only after the southern cone railway is at least single-track opened.

In addition to the large number of skilled workers who have been working on the Northwest Railway construction site for several years and are extremely experienced, the Executive Committee has also provided substantial personnel assistance to the Southern Cone Railway and its dependencies. For example, more than three months ago, the Executive Committee sent more than 400 Greek female slaves to Qingniwa Castle. Serve as a daughter-in-law for the new Ming immigrants from Shandong and Zhejiang. Some local towns and villages are extremely dissatisfied.

To know. Although for two years in a row a large number of Polish slaves were purchased from the Cossacks and Tatars (of course, the purchase of female slaves from the Ottomans was carried out as usual, but in far fewer numbers), the number of male singles on the East Bank, although at the moment there was a decline, was still 18,000, because the proportion of men and women among the immigrants from the Far East was still very large. If this kind of thing is not done well, it is actually easy to cause dissatisfaction among the old immigrants in the East Coast. It can also be seen from this that the Executive Committee made a difficult decision to send Balkan slaves to the southern cone! What a tremendous pressure to withstand!

The efforts of the Executive Committee on migrant vessels are also significant! Not to mention, there are now seven 1,200-ton sailing ships sailing on the South Pacific Circular Migration Route. In addition, all the immigrants in the early stage will be resettled by the Southern Railway Company, and the local immigration department will not ask them for any population, but will subsidize part of the population here - for example, many Livonian people who immigrated at their own expense were guided by the government to settle here.

According to the latest statistics of the Southern Railway Corporation this month (December), the total population of the settlements attached to the Southern Cone Railway (Port of Araukan, Black Mountain Coal Mine, Qingniwa Fort, Sand Castle, Zixinbao and Xingnan Port) has reached 24,500, an increase of almost 50% in one year, which is extremely impressive. Of course, in the short term, this number of growth is almost close to the limit of the Southern Railway's annexes. This area with a poor natural environment needs a period of precipitation and construction before it can afford a larger population.

It is believed that after the second half of next year, the Southern Railway Company will have to divert and resettle some immigrants from the Eastern Ming Kingdom to the mainland in the north. Unless they are willing to risk being discovered by the Spaniards. Breaking the explicit provisions of the Valladolid Treaty and expanding settlements beyond the Southern Rail dependencies - this will not work in the short term. But Lai is also deeply skeptical that the Southern Railway Company is willing to send the precious population back to its homeland. Perhaps they would have sent a large number of Ming people to the territory of the Kingdom of Araucania (not inherited by the Kingdom of Spain). To divert the unaffordable population in the Southern Rail annexes?

It was noon, and the midsummer sun was drying the tongue. Li Dayan handed over the pack horse to his entourage, and then crossed to the banks of the Montenegro River (the Montenegrin River, later known as the Turbio River, a seasonal river with the Andean high mountain snowmelt as its main source of water), and drank the cool snowmelt water. When he had finished drinking, he took off his shoes and socks again, and rudely lowered his feet into the cool water.

The water here is a beautiful blue and the water is very clear, reflecting the deep blue sky. The river flows very fast, with milky white sprays from time to time, and compared to the coarse gravel of the surrounding Gobi Desert, the bottom of the river here is mostly smooth and fine pebbles, which seems to be the result of the river's perennial polishing.

The aquatic vegetation along the river is quite lush, including the nearby green mud wetland, and the banks of the river are covered with green moss and large dense reeds. The small ostrich (slightly smaller than the three-toed ostrich, another subspecies, mostly living in the Patagonian region), swamp deer, mallards, agoutisers are the most common animals here, jackals, foxes, cougars are common ferocious predators, and of course the Andean vultures of the American vulture genus, this ferocious animal is everywhere - well, it looks like the pattern on the East Coast Army flag.

Of course, in the eyes of the officers and soldiers of the road guard team of the Southern Railway Company stationed in the local area, the largest number of local "animals" are probably the original camel and the Tverche people. Camels are flocks of dozens to more than 100 heads, and they are everywhere in the Gobi, grasslands, and oases, and the number is unimaginably large, and they are not afraid of people at all, and often rush to the vicinity of the green mud puddles to nibble on alfalfa or vegetables planted by the residents, which is annoying.

The Tverche people are even more dangerous to the inhabitants of the East Coast than these original camels, they are very unfriendly to the natives, and often rob the inhabitants of the East Coast, which makes people grit their teeth with hatred. On the way to Lai Dayan, there was an attack by the natives, and the Tvirche people even had some horses, God knows how they came - of course, it is not surprising that there are many wild horses in the Pampas and Patagonia, all of which are descendants of the horses left behind by the Spaniards in the grasslands. To be honest, as far as Li Dayan has seen and heard, many Indians' equestrian skills are quite good, and of course the best are the gauchos. Lai suspected that the gauchos were even better than the Tatars of the Old World, because they were able to ride without a saddle and perform all sorts of incredible maneuvers.

The Southern Cone Railway's Qingniwa Station is not far north of the wetland. The two-storey brick house serves as the main building of the station, and there is a clearing in front of the station with sparse weeds, which is the platform. Of course, there were no more guests on the platform at this time, but there were some engineers and technicians who were making a final effort to merge a branch railway from the Black Mountain Coal Mine into the east-west main line in front of the platform.

After the merger of these two sections, the coal from the Black Mountain Coal Mine no longer had to be transported by guò wagon, and the massive amount of coal could be transported by train to the Qingniwa station and then turned west to the port of Araucan. As for the railroad to the east, it has only been extended for a short time, and it has not been repaired at all - even the roadbed is still far behind.

Of course, the construction process of the railway to the east will be accelerated, because the road escort team of the Southern Railway Company carried out a sortie in the inland area of Yancheng Port a while ago: the Yancheng Port side mobilized only a few hundred militiamen, and the Southern Railway Company dispatched two cavalry squadrons (220 people, which were withdrawn by the army's sanctions), and this mixed force suddenly attacked two Tverche tribes that came to drive away the small tribe of Krandi attached to the east bank, killing and wounding more than 300 enemy soldiers in one fell swoop, and capturing more than 1,000 men, women, and children. The captured Indians have now been sent to the outside of the Green Mudhole Fort, where they are supervised by the local patrol and the Patagonian man-made man, and the foundations are leveled and the railroad is built.

As for the local residents, of course, they have built reservoirs (using natural wetlands) and opened up wasteland in the green mud valley area. Residents have reclaimed some fertile and moist land at the edge of the wetland, and have now planted alfalfa to improve the soil. Don't underestimate the speed of development, this midway node town of the Southern Cone Railway, which is already connected to the Montenegrin Coal Mine and the port of Araucan, is destined to develop faster and faster in the future - Li Dayan is convinced of this!

After taking out a dry towel and wiping his feet, Li Dayan put on his shoes and walked towards the township government, which was surrounded by a ring of earthen walls, surrounded by his entourage. When he first arrived in this settlement, he heard something that was very interesting to him: since a considerable number of the first local immigrants came from Guanhaiwei and Cixi counties in Ningbo Prefecture, Zhejiang, the new Zhejiang immigrants, encouraged by the energetic young cadres of Bingtuanbao, put forward a plan to build the Qingniwa into a beautiful "plugged into the south of the Yangtze River". They will dig ditches, level acres, develop orchards, raise livestock, and be at the intersection of branch and trunk railway lines, so the future is bright. And this is undoubtedly an excellent interview material for a veteran reporter like Li Dayan. After the content of the interview is returned, there is a certain amount of artistic processing, and then there is an excellent documentary article that is in line with the main theme of the Executive Committee and the core values of the East Coast, which is very good for publicity. (To be continued......)