The combined force, named the "Sweep Team", consisted of 180 officers and men of the 4th Company of the South African Garrison, 50 local gunners, coachmen, handymen, and escorts (carrying two 4-pounder guns and two 8-pounder guns), 15 scout cavalry, and 240 indigenous spearmen. The soldiers on the East Coast were equipped with cuirasses, the non-commissioned officers and officers were equipped with gauntlets, skirts, and steel helmets, and even the spearmen of the indigenous servant army were each assigned a piece of leather armor that was somewhat so-so, which was somewhat more or less protective.

The "sweep party," which is the largest and largest in South Africa, set out with more than a dozen cavalry as the lead and swept south on July 19, sweeping through two small Khoisan tribes living next to each other in the wilderness. After being discovered by the scout cavalry on the east bank, the two Khoisan tribes were still hurriedly packing up their property, cattle and sheep, and preparing to escape, but they were soon bitten by the east bank army.

After a dozen artillery shots and a round charge by the indigenous spearmen, the resistance of the two tribes was broken. Except for a small number of people who fled, the remaining 500 or so people of the two tribes were caught red-handed, and all the grain, property, and more than 300 cattle and sheep of the tribes were also seized. After sending two platoons of soldiers and dozens of indigenous spearmen to escort them, the newly-acquired slaves, cattle and sheep were all transported back to Fort River.

On 22 July, the Eastern Coast Army "sweep team" again captured a Khoisan tribe in the wild. There are still many people in this tribe, and the resistance is fierce. However, it was inevitable that the musket volleys of the soldiers of the Fourth Company would collapse, and they fled everywhere in the wilderness, and the people on the east coast did not bother to chase them. After packing up the little grain they had left behind and more than 800 cattle and sheep, they swaggered away.

The "mopping-up" operation continued until the beginning of August. Due to the cold weather. In addition, no trace of the Khoisan has been found for many days. Lieutenant Xie Hansan, who led the team, decisively decided to end the military operation, and the whole army returned to Fort Hezhong to rest. The "sweeping" operation in the past half a month or so has achieved remarkable results, destroying a total of five Khoisan tribes, capturing more than 20,000 catties of grain, more than 2,300 cattle and sheep, and capturing nearly 3,000 slaves.

Not only did the officers and men on the east bank of the Fort in the River return satisfied, but even the native servants who followed the battle were overjoyed, because they were able to share in the benefits. After all, the old men on the East Coast eat meat, and they don't necessarily want to let them, the natives who "sincerely" take refuge, not even drink some soup. Not to mention that some grain, animal fat, and some slaves could also be distributed among them, which was the best way for them to increase the strength of their tribe. If the old men on the east bank are satisfied and happy enough, they may be rewarded with some great songs in the river, which is a great honor.

After this sweep, the vast plains south of the Berg River, north of Cape Town, and west of the Cape Range were no longer visible of the activities of the indigenous tribes, who were either captured by the East Bankers, or hidden, or fled across the Cape Mountains into the mountains to the east; Those farther east even fled to the Lesser Karui and Grander Karui plateaus, but they had to face the brutal oppression of the Xhosa blacks there, and the tribal future was bleak.

Meanwhile. Liu Ang led hundreds of heavily armed militiamen to the east. Trade with a number of black tribes of Xhosa who sporadically entered the plains west of the Cape Mountains. The blacks were overjoyed when they found out that the East Coasters had not come to rob them but were doing business with them. They rushed back one after another to bring out the surplus cattle and sheep in the family, and took out some sorghum, peanuts, sesame seeds, and a lot of ivory, animal skins, animal fat, and even dog's head gold, and other items, in exchange for liquor, refined salt, and beloved iron farming tools in the hands of the people on the east coast.

East Coast goods are still very well-known among these indigenous black peoples. Their brewed Daqu in the river has cultivated batch after batch of drunkards among the black tribes, and their refined salt is purer and better than some of the mineral salt scraped by the black people from the mountains, and the metal products they make are better than those they make or trade. As a result, East coast commodities were very popular among these Xhosa.

And this is also the reason why the Fort of River, after solving the food crisis at the beginning of the year, did not rush to rob these natives, without him, as long as the wealth of these Xhosa people could be plundered through this unequal trade, so why bother to fight and kill. Calling around and stinking the reputation will not be able to eat among the blacks in the future, which is really more than worth the loss. If the British hadn't suddenly come to the Cape Town to colonize the area, they wouldn't have wiped out the Khoisan tribes on the plains.

Liu Ang led this armed caravan around the mountains for several days, and only began to return when the hind feet were worn out. When they returned, the cart in their convoy was full of ostrich eggs, grain, furs, ivory and other items, and the cart was followed by more than 1,300 cattle and sheep.

After a few hands, the British will find it difficult to find any more food in the vast plains west of the Cape Mountains. They can only eat the limited amount of food they bring with them, while fishing in the rivers and offshore waters, or try their luck to follow the herds of bison roaming the grasslands. In addition, they had almost no other means to obtain supplies on the spot, and it was difficult to even capture some natives who came to work as coolies to repair the castle, and the blame was that the people of the East Coast were too vicious.

No matter what the British were thinking, Mo Ming's mind was full of how to increase his strength at the moment. At Fort River, the only way to increase the strength of the people on the east bank is to quickly increase the number of reliable people. The reliable population here naturally does not include the indigenous people, but refers to the reliable East coasters from the native land.

Speaking of this issue, we have to go to the other side. Due to the impact of the ongoing war, the population of the East Coast has grown at an extremely slow rate in the past two years, and the current registered population of the country has not even exceeded 25,000. And the proportion of these people who can be considered "East Coasters" is not too high, almost 60%, or 15,000 people.

These 15,000 "East Coast people" basically live in the vicinity of Dongfang Port and the core settlements of Ping'an Town, and their criteria for judging are: consciously speaking Chinese, using Chinese characters, taking Chinese names, eating Chinese food, believing in Taoism, wearing Chinese-style clothes, celebrating Chinese-style festivals, responding to the call of the central government, resolutely implementing various policies, supporting existing laws and regulations, and most importantly, the way of thinking and values tend to be consistent with the "main theme" vigorously promoted by the Traders.

More than 500 people trained a large number of cadres to carry out their will, and set up discipline police in the country to supervise the residents who violated the assimilation policy, and set up a set of extremely cumbersome personal life rules for the residents, using high-pressure punishments, temptations and incentives, and it took eight years to initially assimilate these 15,000 people. This shows how difficult it is to assimilate an "East Coaster". As for the remaining population of nearly 10,000, they are more or less incompletely assimilated and need to be strengthened.

Thanks to the fact that the East Coast is a police state with a repressive rule, and the militaristic atmosphere is extremely strong, and the country is full of military and police gendarmes, the assimilation policy of the masses has been so stumbling and enforced, and it has achieved initial results. If it were a country ruled by loosely organized and decentralized liberals, it would have been scattered and disintegrated long ago, and the Travelers would have been assimilated by the natives.

Moreover, these people who have been assimilated at present are only cultural assimilation, and in the planning of the Executive Committee, assimilation by blood is also indispensable. However, this can only be found in the next generation, and the Executive Committee is currently providing more and more incentives for interracial marriages, and a certain degree of punishment has been introduced for same-race marriages, so as to increase interracial marriages and eliminate racial differences between people as much as possible. If we don't, in a hundred or two hundred years, perhaps the contradictions between the country's aborigines, whites, and Han Chinese will erupt, and it is not impossible for the country to fall apart.

What Mo Ming needs at this time is a "East Coast person" with high consciousness and high quality, but you can imagine how difficult it is. In the past two years, the Bordeaux trade station has collected nearly 2,000 French immigrants and seven or eight hundred children, and the next stage will be a large number of them back to China. If there is no sufficient base of "East Coasters" in China, the cultural impact brought by the more than 2,000 immigrants will be very large, and it will have an adverse impact on the country. Therefore, if you want to talk to the Executive Committee and get some people to come over, you must have the conditions to make the Executive Committee extremely tempted.

After thinking about it, Li Yi, who was still in the navy at the end, gave an idea. At present, the number of miners in the Changshanbao iron ore mine area is seriously insufficient, and the output has not been able to increase, and the insufficient output of iron ore has led to the inability of Ping An Iron and Steel Plant and the coking plant to start normally, which is about to become a problem for the Executive Committee and the Government Council. In view of the sparse indigenous situation in the East Bank and La Plata area, the introduction of African slaves was proposed, but it was soon bombarded by many people who opposed the introduction of blacks and feared that it would be easy to send God to God.

Li Yi's idea was to export South African indigenous slaves to the Changshanbao Iron Mine in the form of labor exports, and set a service period, such as three or five years, to be repatriated to South Africa at the end of the period. At the same time, the Fort of River promised these slaves that they would be given freedom after the expiration of their work in the iron ore mines of Changshanbao, and that they would be included in the system of the six indigenous tribes currently under the control of Fort Hezhong, which was equivalent to giving them official status. (To be continued......)