With the ready-made road, the journey of only a few kilometers does not seem too far, and Shao Yuanyi and Petrov soon arrived at the 8th production team at the foot of the mountain. It is located about 10 kilometers north of West Lake Fort, backed by a small hill and surrounded by a large forest. The people of the East Coast have built a number of miniature reservoirs here, collecting water from some of the local creeks and swamps to irrigate the newly opened farmland.

However, as Petrov said, the people of the East Coast were not the first to settle here. Due to the superior natural conditions of this area, it is possible that thousands of years before the arrival of the people from the east coast, the Guarani people settled here. They practiced primitive slash-and-burn farming and thrived here.

But it all came to an abrupt end when the East Coasters arrived. The technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture took a fancy to the abundant water resources and fertile farmland, so they did not care whether there were settlers in the area, and listed this area as a key reclamation area in the Xihubao Agricultural Zone, and arranged for the 8th to 10th production teams to cultivate the area.

After the technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture returned, a large number of Ming, French, and Italians frantically poured into this fertile land, cutting down trees, hunting animals, filling in swamps, and building reservoirs, without any regard for the interests and feelings of the indigenous people. Naturally, the natives were outraged, and with the help of Spanish missionaries, they took up arms against the East Coasters and succeeded in killing dozens of East Coast pioneers.

However, their revolt was naturally seen as a serious provocation, and two companies of the army, urgently transferred from Zhenhai and Ping'an counties, split up from the north and south, and it took less than a month to clear the land of all the rebellious Guarani villages. Even if they did not participate in the attack on the Guarani village of the people on the east bank. They were also forcibly expelled or exiled by the people of the East Coast. Naturally, the expulsion was driven into the mountains. The exiled was exiled to Australia.

After the battle on the surface, the Guaraní who retreated into the mountains were not reconciled to defeat and launched a guerrilla war with the people on the east coast that continues to this day. From time to time, they rushed down the plains from the hills and mountains, and then raided the villages of the people on the east coast, destroying their crops and plundering their livestock. Naturally, the people of the East Coast were not afraid of their attacks, and although these Guarani had the help of Spanish missionaries, their weapons were still rather rudimentary. Most of the people used spears, bows and arrows, and there were few arquebuses. Every adult man on the east bank had to undergo regular military training and join the local militia, and the head of armed forces at Fort West Lake gave each of them a flintlock rifle, and even each production team was equipped with a 4-pounder cannon, which was very powerful.

In addition, the people of the East Coast also divided and co-opted those Guarani tribes, taking advantage of the contradictions and even hatred between their different tribes to achieve their own goals. With the help of the Belt and Road Party, the East Coasters mobilized three army companies and an equal number of militia at once to carry out a large-scale and bloody purge of the hideouts of the hostile Guarani tribes in the mountains. Under this constant blow. The resistance of the Guarani people is getting weaker and weaker, and many tribes cannot endure such a brutal and bloody war. Instead, they migrated westward into the depths of the hills. And those who stayed and insisted on fighting were naturally not as strong as before, and now they could only carry out some attacks in twos and threes, and in many cases, their own losses were often much greater than those of the people on the east coast.

According to Spanish missionaries who participated in the incident, the East Coasters killed and wounded more than 1,500 Guarani settlers over a period of two years, and more than 1,000 Guarani indirectly because of them. In addition, they exiled more than 600 peaceful villagers of Guarani, a significant number of whom are believed to have died on the road, and less than half of them made it to the place of exile. The main reason for this tragedy is that these Guarani people are agricultural and sedentary tribes, and unlike the Indians on the North American continent who live by hunting and do not have a clear concept of territory, they grow corn, cassava, raise livestock, have a clear concept of territory, and are extremely determined to defend their territory, which leads to a fierce and irreconcilable conflict with the outsiders from the East Bank who are determined to seize their land.

Today, March 1644, the conflict between the two sides was not so severe, because the Guarani had been weakened by two years of fighting, and now they could only carry out some harassing attacks. And the people of the East Coast have finally solved the long sword hanging above their heads for two years, and they can finally farm and live in peace.

What Shao Yuanyi and Petrov saw at this time was a stable rural idyll, the large-scale war was a thing of the past, and everyone had to continue to live. As a result, most of the people at the entrance of the village were harvesting crops in the fields, except for some armed militia guards as usual.

What opened Shao Yuanyi's eyes was that a strange machine pulled by four horses appeared in the field. When Petrov saw it, he also said in a tone full of admiration: "This is a machine sent from Dafengbao a few days ago, it is really amazing, it can automatically harvest corn in the field, and the efficiency is higher than that of 50 stick boys. It's incredible! ”

In fact, the machine Petrov is talking about is the first generation of horse-drawn corn harvesters produced by the newly established Harvest Agricultural Machinery Factory in Dafengbao. The harvester was the brainchild of a handful of veterans who had traveled through the crowd and then designed by a new generation of young mechanical designers. These old people were born in the 40s of the 20th century, and when they were young, they saw and even used and repaired agricultural machinery and equipment such as animal-powered harvesters and threshers. After the need for an efficient crop harvesting machine was proposed in the large agricultural areas near Xihu Fort and Dafeng Fort, a bureaucrat of the Ministry of Agriculture dug out a design drawing, that is, a drawing of a horse-drawn harvester, from the filing cabinet.

This drawing has been lying quietly in a filing cabinet for years. In the past, there was a lack of demand for this aspect, domestic agricultural production was relatively scattered, and the crops were often harvested by farmers themselves, and there was an objective lack of motivation to develop new machines; Second, the technical content of this machine is not low, and many parts need to be processed by the machine, because it is time-consuming and laborious to make it by hand, the cost is high, and it lacks practical significance. However, today, with the gradual development of the machining level in the East Coast Republic, it is no longer a problem to process some agricultural machinery parts.

It just so happens that a large area of agricultural planting is planned in the area west of Yazi Lake in China, and this large-scale agricultural production method puts forward new requirements for high-efficiency harvesting machines. Therefore, the harvest agricultural machinery factory came into being in this context, and the first equipment they produced was the corn harvester in front of them, which was used to harvest early corn in the agricultural area of Xihubao. At present, only one type of equipment has been produced, which is first used for trial in order to improve and finally finalize production.

This equipment is mainly composed of a cutter, a divider, a transmission device, and a conveying mechanism. Among them, the most important component cutter is a cutting knife that does reciprocating motion, which is composed of a tool handle, a moving blade, and a tool bar head, which is connected with the transmission mechanism for transmitting power; The main function of the separator is to separate the crops to be cut from the uncut crops; The conveying mechanism is a conveyor belt made of canvas or animal skin, and the conveyor belt is equipped with picks to better transport the cut corn cob to the rear pocket; The conveyor mechanism is connected to the shank head of the cutter on the same drive shaft to convey the corn while cutting.

In general, this machine still has a certain technical content. The strength of the parts or the machining accuracy may not be very high, but the design idea is much stronger than the animal harvester designed by the British and Americans in the early 19th century, after all, this is the harvesting machinery that was still used in the countryside after the liberation of China until the sixties. After certain modifications, this harvesting machine can also harvest rice, wheat, pasture, etc., and its principle is similar, and the changes are not too complicated.

If this equipment is found to have no problems after trial in the Xihubao Reclamation Area, then the Fengshou Agricultural Machinery Factory will be finalized and produced, and then the Ministry of Agriculture will promote it throughout the country to improve production efficiency and liberate rural labor. And some people may say why not use steam power, but use this less efficient animal power as power? This is complicated to say, in simple terms, there are three reasons, one is that the people on the east coast lack of manganese, chromium and other non-ferrous metals, so the steel material is like that, and the steam engine cannot be miniaturized; Second, the steam engine is expensive to build and maintain; The third is that the steam harvester is too heavy, which is easy to cause damage to the farmland, and if you want to reduce the weight, you have to involve the problem of metal materials. All in all, the steam-powered harvester is limited by materials and processing reasons on the east coast today, and in general, the cost performance is not high, the practicability is not strong, and it does not have the significance of production and promotion.

Shao Yuanyi and Petrov soon arrived at the production team headquarters here. The militiaman, who had been wounded in his left leg, was lying inside, and he was chatting with others at this time, and he seemed to be in good spirits. Shao Yuanyi let go of the splint and looked at it, the fractured part was a little purple and swollen, but the orthopedic treatment was not bad, and there was no need to re-connect the bone. So he quickly secured the splint on the soldier's leg and gave him a list of nourishing foods.

On the other side, Petrov had already chatted with the captain of the production team and the commander of the militia, and they were talking mainly about the upcoming opening of the hill and the situation of the Guarani there. (To be continued......)