Vicente Jr. had just come down from the Black Mountain Mine, where the East Coasters were already trying to mine coal. The vast open-pit coal mine produced so much more that the black "stones" were dug out of the surface, washed and dried and thrown into the furnace to make a fire, which was much more convenient than the daily long journey to distant places to cut wood. And this black fuel is not expensive at all, and now many people in the city have begun to spend money on it. What the? What kind of money do you say they spend? Of course, they are all kinds of coins made by the First Mint of the Republic of China.

Nowadays, the free city of Araucan is getting bigger and bigger, and the rolling mountains of southern Chile are no longer limiting them. And as the number of new Araucans grew, Vicente Jr., who now numbered more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians, began to have even greater ambitions, and he ordered his soldiers to march north with tents and flocks. These Araucanian guerrilla soldiers climbed mountains and valleys full of coniferous forests (mainly fir and Chilean cypress) to plant the banner of the Kingdom of Araucania in the vast lands further north.

And once they find the land with abundant water and grass and settle down, they will start to recruit residents who are willing to come and cultivate it. The new Grand Chancellor of the Kingdom of Araucania (who claimed to have only recognized the small Free City of Araucan on the East Coast and in Spain) gave them all these lands, so if they wanted to monetize the wealth of the land, they would first need to recruit a large number of people to cultivate the land and extract resources.

But the Araukans are not very well manned. Today, sixty or seventy percent of the 10,000 people of the Kingdom of Araucania live in the Free City of Araucania, and they are all directly under the direct command of the head of the kingdom, Vicente the Younger. As for the manpower at the disposal of the hundreds of guerrilla fighters (who have now become lords) of the first "Conglong", it is pitiful. But their demand for population is enormous. For this. They are in their own interests. An agreement had to be reached with the Southern Rail Company of the Eastern Republic to bring in the population from the Far East for them.

These introduced populations are said to have come mainly from the "western" Ming Kingdom, and they were hard-working and tenacious, and had an unusually proficient knowledge of land development, which was well suited to the requirements of the lords of the Kingdom of Araucania. When these Ming people were introduced, their nationality would fall on the east coast, and then they would be counted as expatriates working in the kingdom of Araucania. Of course, their jurisdiction then falls into the hands of the East Coast government. When the Araukans had a dispute with the East Coasters, they would apply the laws of the East Coast. The fighters of the Araucan guerrillas did not think this was much of a problem, so they readily agreed.

In fact, for the Ming people, some of them still have some understanding, aren't most of the men in the East Coast Republic of China the Ming people? And they are indeed very different from the Spaniards, for example, they never eat the bread that the Spaniards often eat, they rarely drink milk, they raise cows only to breed their young; They also cultivated the land more delicately than the Araucan or the Spaniards, ploughing the fields and hoeing weeds several times in the summer. Thus the harvest was generally much higher than that of the sown Araukans; They feed their livestock almost exclusively with soybean cake or straw and rarely with hay. They cut the hay just to sell it. Well, according to the people of the East Coast, that is the difference between the farming civilization and the fishing, hunting and gathering civilization.

Vicente's men were short of labor, but there was a large amount of cheap labor in the free city of Araucan, which he himself administered. This port city on the arid and barren coast could not feed six or seven thousand people according to the backward productivity of the Araukans, so the poor Araukans accepted the employment of the East Coasters and sold their labor power to earn some goods to support their families.

Their main places of work were the wharf of the port of Araucan, which was purchased by the people of the east coast, and the second was the construction of the roadbed from the wharf to the eastern terrace (there was a difference in the terrain between the platform and the wharf, and there was no road or railway without repair), both of which were long-term projects, so these Araucan people were not unemployed.

Of course, after the Montenegrin coal mine (known as the Rio Turvio mine, so named after the mountains of coal it produced) began to enter the trial mining phase, working as a coal miner there became a new option for many Araucans who could not afford to work on the site. In fact, it is ironic to think that they fled the Spanish territory in order to escape the heavy physical labor and endless exploitation, but now they still have to sell their physical goods in the free city of Araucan in order to have enough to eat, as if life played a big joke on them. But in fact, their lives have improved a lot, for example, the work intensity of the coal mines is much less than that of the Spaniards, and they will pay them wages, and they can still have a little surplus after paying for food, which is an increase in the standard of living. What's more, they are still completely free in the legal sense, and they can do what they want to do in the coal mines, and if they don't want to do it, they will say hello and leave in advance, and no one will stop them.

The chief of the mining section of the technical department of the Southern Railway Company personally sat in the Black Mountain Coal Mine to organize trial production, and the machinery and equipment purchased by the company have not yet arrived, so the original manual excavation method is still used in the mine for mining. The work in the mines is arduous and arduous, especially in spring and autumn, and the health of the miners in the waterlogged tunnels is often greatly affected. Rheumatism is the most common disease here, followed by scarlet fever and dysentery, and occasionally malaria, which greatly affects the efficiency of the mine.

In addition, due to the large number of Araucan workers, these backward and enjoyable natives gradually became tainted with the vices of debauchery and profligacy. When working in the mines, strict regulations and prohibition led them to stay in the workplace to dig coal, and once they were out of the mine, they immediately resumed their unbridled profligacy, buying food and drink in the state-run stores run by the East Coasters, until they had spent most or all of their money, and then returned home empty-handed. These people are not so much helpers of the family as a burden to the family.

These conditions have been played out many times in the Ping'an Coal Mines on the east coast, and there are very few Indian workers who work in the mines without getting into bad habits and insist on taking their wages home. As a result, the people who came to work in the East Coast Mine were basically just bachelors who left their families to live alone, and after working in the mines for a period of time, they could no longer adapt to the old family life. After a few years of debauchery, they lost their health and returned to the tribe with their half-crippled bodies, relying on intermittent support from their family members.

The East Coast Mines Bureau had also tried to limit the debauchery of the Indian hired laborers, because it had clearly affected the production of the mines, but it had little effect, and the vices of the Indians who had not yet transitioned to civilization could not be eliminated. Therefore, if it were not for the lack of real patience now, the technical department of the Southern Railway Company would not have hired Araucan workers. Perhaps next year, when a large number of Ming people set sail from Australia to the port of Araukan, they will be able to kick these ignorant and unruly Araukans out of the way, and then dig coal or build roads themselves.

The construction of two ports, a road, a railway, and a number of settlements may require a huge investment of more than 10 million yuan if all measured in monetary terms, and the Southern Railway Company obviously lacks such a huge amount of funds at present -- they have even raised less than 20 percent of the total, which is only enough for the expenses of the previous year or two.

It is precisely because of this situation that the Southern Railway Company urgently needs to strengthen its own hematopoietic ability, and it can create a profit of the company. For example, the seal and sea otter hunting and killing industry in Southern Patagonia (6 yuan for a seal skin and 24 yuan for a sea otter skin), as well as the oil refining industry that has been derived; For example, fishing along the Chilean coast and logging in beech forts; Then there is the trial production of the Montenegrin Coal Mine (the coal produced is transported to the port of Araukan by cart, and then transported back to China by chartered ship to compete with the refined coal of the Tacheng Coal Mine on Xinhuaxia Island).

The above businesses are all measures to increase the hematopoietic capacity of the Southern Railway Company, but unfortunately it is currently limited to the lack of manpower and the lack of financial strength, these industries are still in their infancy, and the profits obtained cannot even offset the large investment in the early stage. In order to reverse this predicament and open up new sources of finance, Mo Ming, president of the Southern Railway Company, recently convened a meeting of the head of the company's business department in Xingnangang, preparing to send people to Chile to explore the tone of the Spaniards and see if there is any possibility of bilateral trade.

Although the war between the two countries has just ended, and the wounds of the war have not yet healed, for Westerners, business is business, and as long as it can generate enough profits, then there is nothing that cannot be discussed. After all, from the perspective of their history, the behavior of doing business while fighting abounds, and it is normal. Moreover, now that the war in Europe is almost over, only the two great powers of Spain and France are still dead, so that the Kingdom of Spain, which is economically struggling and short of goods, may be even more unable to take care of the economy of its colonies. Therefore, it is advantageous for both sides for the Southern Railway Company to come forward to export goods to Chile and other Spanish colonies, and then import some commodities that are urgently needed on the east coast. (To be continued......)