After sending Van Boiningen to a merchant ship bound for the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the Zan River, Mo San took his letter of recommendation and drove to Horen in a carriage with his retinue.

Holren is a port in the province of Holland and, along with Enkhuizen to the north, is the main port for the province to trade with the Baltics. Just as Rotterdam was mainly engaged in trade with Anglo-French and Friesland, and the provinces of Friesland were mainly engaged in Nordic trade, the ports of Horen and Enkhuizen were the ports of origin and destination for the vast majority of Dutch merchants who went to trade in the Baltics.

Tripp Comptoir is located in the best part of the docks near Hollen Harbour, and the tall buildings designed by professional designers are majestic and spectacular, highlighting the grandeur and luxury of the Tripp family. More than 30 horse-drawn carriages were parked at the entrance of the main building of the commercial house at the same time, and there were constantly well-dressed managers of the commercial house coming in and out, and sometimes some small merchants attached to the commercial house came to do business, in short, it was very busy.

"Mr. Mo San, the special envoy from the East Coast Republic of China?" An old man with a pair of glasses suddenly walked to the door and said to Mo San in French.

"It's me." Mo San took off his hat and said hello politely.

"Come with me, Monsieur de Hare is waiting for you inside." The old man said.

"Mr. de Hale, I'm going to meet Mr. Tripp, isn't he here?" Mo San said strangely.

"Mr. Tripp has gone to the province of Zeeland, and now only Mr. de Hare is here." The old man turned around and said solemnly, "There is something that Mr. de Hale said. The firm was originally run by the Tripp family as a joint venture with the de Hale family, and the wife of Hendrick (Elias's nephew) of the Tripp family was Johanna. Miss de Hale. At present, the business of the comptoir is presided over by Mademoiselle de Hale's father, Matthias. Mr. de Haier, who usually supervises an iron foundry in Sweden. Today it happens to be within the comptoir. You can talk to him about anything. He is the same generation as Elias, the hero of the Tripp family, and he can call the shots when it comes to general matters. ”

The old man's words are already very clear: yellow-skinned heretics, your affairs are only ordinary affairs of little importance, and the big names of the Tripp family may not be able to look at you, and their in-laws can afford to look up to you, so please do it yourself.

Mo San nodded when he heard this, and didn't say anything more.

At this time, there were still many people in the business house who were handling various affairs. Many people couldn't help but be a little surprised when they saw Mo San, a very eye-catching yellow-skinned heretic, come in, and some even said "East Indies" in a contemptuous and nonchalant tone. The old man who led Mo San in didn't say anything to explain, as if he hadn't heard anything, while Mo San looked at these well-dressed Dutch businessmen and managers with indifferent eyes, as if he was looking at a dead man—I don't know how many of the gentlemen in the hall can maintain their ability not to go bankrupt today, and how many of them can guarantee not to be fired. What is there to say about such a group of feel-good red hairs? To borrow a sentence from Cao Apu, "dry bones in the mound" ear!

After bringing Mo San into the office upstairs. The old man bowed to one of the gray-haired old men inside, and then quietly retreated outside the door. There were still a few young people working hard to write something inside the door. They only looked up slightly when Mo San entered the door, and then buried their heads again and wrote quickly with a quill pen, as if their work could never be done.

"Mr. Mo San, the envoy of the Eastern Coast Republic?" The gray-haired old man removed a piece of crystal clear lens from his right eye, then rubbed his face vigorously, and said in a slightly tired voice: "Mr. Special Envoy, your reputation in the province of Holland has been very good lately. No, this may be a bit inaccurate, but to be precise, your fame has now even spread to the province of Friesland. Some of the merchants in the province who are focused on the Moscow trade have been worried during your visit to the Dutch province, and they fear that their business interests will be affected......"

"Friesland?" Mo San first carefully tasted the old man's words, and then asked, "Is it a grain merchant?" However, I remember that there are not many merchants in your country who run a grain business in Moscow, and most of the grain merchants in your country are concentrated in Poland! ”

"It's just some small businessman who doesn't have a climate." Mathias. De Hare muttered disapprovingly, "Most of the merchants who are attached to the Orange faction are landed nobles in the provinces of Friesland and Groningen, and they are not financially strong, but they are quite ambitious. They did not dare to compete with the twelve large grain wholesalers in Amsterdam, which monopolized the Polish market, so they could only go to great lengths to explore the territory of the strange Rus' people, which was really the same virtue as the Orange family. ”

Mo San listened to this old man's mouth derogatory to the Orange family one after another, and secretly thought to himself that this old man was not inclined to the republicans? But what does this concern to me, the people of the East Coast? You republicans and Orange factions take turns in power in the United Provincial Republic, and we can't control each other in private! The only thing we care about is how much we can get back from the Dutch. However, the old man's words also revealed much information, namely, that the Dutch merchants who were active in Muscovy, at least as far as some of the grain merchants were concerned, were mostly landed nobles from the provinces of Friesland and Groningen.

The landed aristocracy, hehe, and the families of Tripp and de Haire, who were born as merchants (or nouveau riche) - these merchants were always discriminated against by the landed aristocracy, no matter how rich they were, it was really annoying - it was really annoying - it was always difficult to deal with. Frederick of House Orange, who is now the ruler of Friesland, is the natural leader of these landed nobles. But what does Matthias, the old fox, mean by saying this in front of Mo San? Is it to encourage my merchants of the Great East Coast not to give face to the Orange family and to squeeze to death the Dutch merchants who are active in Moscow?

"Let's get straight to the point......" Matthias. De Haire suddenly stood up, and as he walked towards Mo San, he said: "Our firm intends to develop new projects in addition to the traditional business, mainly the grain, tobacco, fish, olive oil and wine business. But you also saw that damn British pirates blocked the Strait of Dover, chasing the ships of the United Provincial Republic like mad dogs. And our navy is powerless to break this blockade. It's a shame. The Estates-General must be held accountable for this! The Oranges are also -- okay. Far from it, to put it simply, the Tripp Comptoir intends to order a shipment of grain, fish and wine from your country. The grains, including flour and soybeans, were of the same quality as the last time, and the bread baked from this flour would be the object of the whole gentry; In the case of soybeans, Konrad (referring to Van Boiningen) has already talked to you, yes, those two boatloads of soybeans are what we ordered, and we want to try the market acceptance of this new thing. I heard that the Genoese trading houses sold this kind of stuff in small quantities, so we wanted to try it too. ”

"Also, I've heard that your country has a vessel that preserves meat and fish at freezing point, and that's amazing. I would therefore like your country to export 1,000 rastes per year (1,000 tonnes in fishing and 1 rast in grain transport about 2 tonnes) of fish, not necessarily cod or herring. In fact, Amsterdam's citizens are still very curious in their spending habits, they are particularly interested in fish from far away, and the prices are relatively high, but no one has done this before. By the way, I specifically declare. Fish can't be salted fish! Matthias admonished word for word.

"That's a reasonable request." Mo San nodded understandingly.

"Finally, there are wines, I heard that there are two kinds of wines from your country (Xiangshan dry red from Zhenhai County and Xianghe wine from Hezhong County in South Africa). The quality is still so-so. But in this time of scarcity - truth be told, it would have been nice to have wine, and now that the British are also attacking everywhere in the Mediterranean, and the navy has been forced to send a large number of ships into the Mediterranean to escort ships, the source of wine and olive oil in the Mediterranean has been greatly reduced, and the British have been crazy in the Strait of Dover, and the Amsterdam market is now short of such supplies. Therefore, our firm plans to import more of these daily necessities, well, I heard that you use liters to calculate the amount of liquor? Okay, just in liters, the exact number will be discussed later, but it will definitely surprise you. ”

"Our country still produces some cheese and salted ham, as well as some whale oil, whale skin and whalebone products, don't you need to order some?" Mo San skillfully marketed Matthias the goods of the East Coast.

"Cheese can be purchased in moderation." Matthias nodded approvingly and said, "Whale products are also available." Recently the British are also attacking our whaling ships, damn it! Ham aside, the Danes in Jutland are now organizing a large number of beef cattle to be transported through Germany to the Drenthe region for fattening and then to the Dutch province. This is thanks to the Speaker of the City (Horen City) Nanning. It was during his time in Denmark that Mr. Kaiser used his diplomatic prowess to accomplish this important task. ”

This Nanning. Kaiser is definitely a republican! Mo San thought maliciously.

Now that the types of goods have been discussed (Tripp Comptoir is mainly preparing to enter the food industry), the following is the details, including the number of goods ordered. In this regard, Mo San strongly insisted that the two parties sign a formal supply contract, which Matthias agreed, but he and Mo San disagreed on the duration of the supply: Mo San asked for at least five years, while Matthias only intended to sign two to three years.

However, fortunately, the sincerity of both sides was sufficient, and finally after negotiation, the term of the supply agreement was set at four years - to be honest, although the De Haire family and the Tripp family are both big merchant families with a wide range of sources, they really can't accurately predict how long this war will last, so they signed a four-year supply contract with Mo San, which is one year longer than the term of the "Hotel Secret Treaty" signed by Van Boiningen under the instructions of the Dutch Council of the Third Level, which makes Mo San happy.

Mo San was not only happy that he had signed some supply contracts with the Dutch, but also that he was more concerned about this "zero breakthrough" in the large-scale export of materials to the Dutch Province. Although many of the agreements were only signed for three or four years, this was already very good, and in the past few years, we have worked hard to make more connections, to get to know more people, and not to ensure that the agreement expires and both parties unanimously ask for a renewal of the agreement, and then the export of goods to the Netherlands will be long-term, which will be of great significance to the industry and agriculture on the east coast.

Consider that the United Provinces itself has a population of 17.8 million people (whose purchasing power should never be underestimated), and they also control large swaths of the overseas market. If the Eastern Coast Republic had followed the path of these powerful Dutch merchant families and penetrated the distribution channels of the Dutch into these overseas markets, the prospects for profit would be immeasurable. And even better, it also avoids head-on competition with many Dutch businessmen, virtually circumventing market barriers, which is simply the cheapest thing in the world.

"Looks like we're going to have to stay in the Netherlands for a while." Mo San thought about it, "I'm sorry for myself if I don't take advantage of the difficult times for the Dutch to make more money." (To be continued......) R1292