(If you want to hear more of your voices and receive more of your opinions, search for the WeChat public account "ddxiaoshuo" now and follow it to give more support to "Crossing 1630: The Rise of South America"!) "In the history of the port of Araucan, I'm afraid there has never been such a busy moment. This was the first exclamation of Mr. Castelli, a senior engineer at the Ministry of Transportation and an immigrant of Italian origin, after entering the city. The wharf covers an extremely large area (in March, the Southern Railway Company again purchased a piece of land adjacent to the wharf from the Araukan people to build a storage area), but it looked a little chaotic, with a large number of Araucan hired workers, Ming immigrants and self-funded immigrants from Livonia running back and forth on the wharf, constantly transporting piles of goods to the rear yard by guò flatbed railcars and freight wagons.

On the other side of the yard, a large group of black dispatch workers from Xhosa, South Africa, are working hard to build rows of storage facilities, including tall and dry grain warehouses and warehouses for high-end commodities such as sugar, cotton, tobacco and cocoa. Of course, the vast majority of the cargo in the yard was stacked in the open air, mainly metal ores, huge tropical logs (which could be used as ship masts) and a large number of livestock, mainly cattle.

"Mr. Steli (Chinese name on Castelli's ID card), welcome to you. I am Liu Jianguo from the Engineering Department of the Southern Railway Company, and in the next period of time, I will accompany you to inspect the Xingnan Highway and the wharf storage area, and I hope that the cooperation will be pleasant. Liu Jianguo, who is only 18 years old this year, is the eldest son of Liu Ang, the captain of the South African pioneer team, and currently works in the Southern Railway Company. Belongs to an engineering technician. Of course. There is no doubt that he is not an ordinary technician. Not only because he has undergone a complete and systematic education and has knowledge beyond his peers, but also because his father and Mo Ming, the president of the Southern Railway Company, wear a pair of pants at all, so his prospects in the Southern Railway Company are quite optimistic.

Mr. Si Taili, a civil engineering expert who accompanied the local people, inspected the Xingnan Highway, which had been built for more than half a year, which was Liu Jianguo's first task since he joined the company. The Heungnam Highway was completed in the second half of last year and has been put into use since then. After that, because the road itself was nothing more than a low-grade, temporary simple sand road (the total cost was less than 300,000 yuan, the total length was more than 300 kilometers). Therefore, under the frequent crushing of various vehicles or machines such as heavy freight carriages, drum crushers, roller rollers, steam plows, etc., the current road conditions are not very good, and many construction units have repeatedly complained to the Southern Railway Company many times, and warned that the lack of necessary maintenance of this road has affected their efficiency in transporting materials in a certain way, and this will undoubtedly affect the construction progress of the Liangyang Railway.

In the southern Patagonia region, anything that can be related to the transoceanic railway deserves special attention from the company's top management, and the Hungnam Highway obviously belongs to this list. With the booming smuggling trade between the Republic of the East and Peru, a large amount of goods was transported by ships of the South China Sea Transport Company from the port of Rocha to the port of Hungnan. It is then transshipped by land to the port of Araucan. In that port on the Pacific coast, the industrial goods were once again loaded onto ships of the Southern Railway Company. Escorted by naval warships, they then followed the cold Humboldt Stream to the Maurin River to trade with the Spaniards, and finally returned to the port of Araucan laden with Peruvian products and precious metals. In other words, as the scale of trade grew, the Hungnam Highway, a temporary road built for the construction of the railway, has become more and more important, carrying far more than it can carry, and it is no wonder that people complain about its poor road conditions, which are really beyond its capacity.

Considering the huge subsidy effect of the smuggling trade on the financial situation of the Southern Railway Company, Mo Ming, the company's president, began to seriously consider the possibility of renovating the road, that is, whether to transform this simple temporary sand road with a cost of only 300,000 yuan into a high-grade permanent road. After all, the construction of the Transoceanic Railway has been in full swing for less than a year, and it is still early for it to open to traffic, and trade with Peru still depends on the Hindnan Highway.

Of course, some people may ask why the trade with Peru is not carried directly by sea ships to the Pacific Ocean around Cape Horn. Theoretically, of course, this is possible, and it is quite convenient, but considering the year-round high winds and waves in the waters around Cape Horn (which can even reach seven or eight meters in height), it is too dangerous to take this route. At the end of November last year, the South Sea Transport Company sent five flute-type transport vessels to the port of Araucan to transport construction materials, only to encounter high seas and tragically sink two ships - the eleventh and twelfth ships that have been sunk by non-combat factors during the years of the East Coast - which shows the danger of this route.

The same is true of the Strait of Magellan, which must be passed back from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, with rapids, swells, fog, strong winds, reefs and floating icebergs all nightmares for captains. Therefore, the current advice given by the Ministry of Communications is that if you can avoid these two areas, you should avoid these two dangerous sea areas as much as possible, so as not to lose ships and valuable sailors again. As for the transportation of materials, except for some bulky materials such as building materials, rails, and grain, which are still transported by sea, everything else is transshipped by land (for this reason, the Southern Railway Company has ordered a large number of heavy goods vehicles from the local Southern Vehicle Factory in three batches), and this obviously falls on the Xingnan Highway.

"The railways have not been built, and the roads have obviously taken on an important transportation task." On June 20, accompanied by more than a dozen entourages, Si Taili and Liu Jianguo left the noisy port of Araukan, taking a truck and a dozen mules and horses along the Xingnan Highway all the way to the east, carefully inspecting and recording the conditions of each section of the Xingnan Highway along the way.

"The smuggling trade with Peruvians is thriving now, and every month there are a lot of supplies that need to be transferred back and forth between the two oceans. Before, our company only had dozens of horse-drawn trucks with a load of 1.5 tons to undertake the task of transporting materials, but now, the number of trucks in use has increased to more than 130, and the load has generally risen to 2 tons, 2.5 tons or even 3 tons, which shows the heavy transportation task. Liu Jianguo rode on his horse, carefully observing the road damage, and responded to Steli's words: "Of course, this kind of busy cargo transportation task is something that the whole company is happy to see. After all, the smuggling trade has been reaping a lot of benefits since it began eight months ago. Although the profit in the next few months was far less than that of the first two or three months, the total amount added up to a lot of money, about nearly 340,000 yuan, which was the net profit we obtained after trading with the Peruvians; In addition, the company has resold a large number of goods imported from Peru back to the country, you know, with the improvement of the living standards of the local people and the increase of per capita disposable wealth, such as sugar, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, high-quality leather sales in the country is quite good, this kind of direct to the domestic needs of the people will not be unprofitable at any time. Of course, there is a lot of market demand for industrial and agricultural means such as sulfur, lead, tin, copper, tropical logs, animal fat (for soap production), guano, etc., and there is a lot to be made in this, because our import prices are not high. Well, Mr. Stely, you have a good relationship with the president of our company, and you are not an outsider, so it is okay to sue you. In the eight months since the smuggling trade began, we have made a total profit of about 500,000 yuan in Peru and in China, and have greatly promoted domestic industrial production, and the Executive Committee and the Council are quite satisfied with this. ”

Stely nodded, he'd heard of it. Nowadays, with the spread of mercantilism in Europe, trade barriers have begun to show great power, and business is quite difficult to do. Don't you see that the turnover of goods at the Qingdao Autumn Fair in May is far less than in previous years? With insufficient domestic demand and a structural surplus of industrial and agricultural production, the economy of the Eastern Republic is currently only driven by large-scale infrastructure investment by the government, but this is undoubtedly not a long-term solution. Of course, the princes of the Executive Committee also saw this unhealthy economic predicament, and they were also anxious to quickly readjust the structure of domestic industrial production, expand domestic demand, and vigorously open up new external markets, in order to get out of the quagmire of weak exports and sweep away the previous decline. The Peruvian smuggling trade, which has been developed by the Southern Rail Company, is an excellent opportunity that everyone cannot afford not to seize closely.

"A huge profit of more than 500,000 yuan was made in eight months, and this is just the beginning. I believe that with the passage of time, with the deepening of the market development process, the total profit in this will be higher and higher, right? I have heard before that the foreign smugglers of the Caribbean Sea may not make much less profit from their trade each year than the silver that the Kingdom of Spain digs from Peru, and the market is really large. "However, the task undertaken by the Southern Railway Company is also extremely arduous, and the total planned investment in the construction of the two modern ports of Xingnan Port and Araukan Port is more than 5.5 million yuan; There is also the equally expensive Transoceanic Railway, the logging yard and port of Tierra del Fuego, the development of the Black Mountain Coal Mine, the seafood processing center, the Hungnam Highway, the construction of new settlements, and the resettlement of new immigrants, all of which require a lot of money. Even if the investment is spread over the next 10 years, the amount of money spent each year is still astronomical, and it is really not easy. ”

"Who's to say it isn't!" Liu Jianguo smiled helplessly at Steli and said: "We all have this awareness, that is, before the official opening of the Liangyang Railway, it is unlikely that the Southern Railway Company will be profitable. Or to put it more bluntly, I think that before 1654, the Southern Railway Company will lose money for a record six consecutive years, which is probably the only one in China, haha! Of course, if the number of immigrants continues to increase and the Executive Committee gives us more support, it is not impossible to complete the Yoyo Railway ahead of schedule, and then the company will be able to make a profit ahead of schedule. (My novel "Crossing 1630: The Rise of South America" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lottery gift for everyone!) Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner "Add Friends", search for the official account "ddxiaoshuo" and follow, hurry up! (To be continued......)