"It's time to arrive! Let's all get off the boat! With a shout from Captain Ventura, a Malay sailor immediately laid a piece of lap between the deck and the trestle. Then, about thirty or forty men with eastern faces stepped off the boat in a daze.

"It's a man again!" "It's a man again!" "It's been a long time since a woman has come!" "Forget about us, old man!" "I want to go to the big city! There are beautiful and enthusiastic girls there! ”

Sighs and whinings rang out from the docks, and Castelli shrugged, having seen too many of them since he arrived on the East Coast from Italy early last year. There seems to be a shortage of women in the country, and Castelli can see this with his own eyes, without any investigation or data – because it's all too obvious.

"Good morning, Mr. Castelli." Captain Ventura saw Castelli working outside the castle of the Lower River and immediately greeted him. It is said that before his family fell into the middle of the road, he tried to learn from the famous scholar Mr. Galileo, but unfortunately he never got the opportunity. Mr. Castelli, a pupil and friend of Galileo, had always admired him, and he greeted him warmly.

"Good morning, Captain Ventura." Castelli was also fond of the middle-aged captain from Lombardy, who was enthusiastic and conscientious, and although he had the usual chatter and complaining of Italians, he was generally a nice man.

"New guests are coming? The children all looked a little depressed, and they seemed disappointed. Castelli looked at the Orientals who were silently stepping off the deck with their heads bowed, and then at the listless young dock workers on the docks. The dozen or so dockers are all Italian villagers from Taranto. Castelli had a good conversation with them. These guys are good guys. Work hard and love life. In addition to this, they have one more thing in common - they don't have wives. It's not that I can't afford to marry, but the number of women in this country is really too small!

"They have good reasons to be disappointed." Captain Ventura grinned, picked up the cowhide water bladder on his waist, took a sip of the spicy river song, and then said: "More than 1,700 Ming people have come this time, and there may be an equal number of people who will arrive at the end of the year." But that's not the point, the point is that less than 500 of the people who have arrived are probably women. ”

"This news is really devastating." Castelli sighed and said sympathetically. He's a handful of old people. He has grandchildren, but now he suddenly has some doubts about whether his grandson can marry a wife.

"But it's not without good news." Captain Ventura took another sip of wine, "The Census Office of the Ministry of Home Affairs has posted a notice that it is said that the quota for Malay women will be relaxed to 750 this year. Cheers, lads, from 500 to 750, it's going to solve a big part of the problem. ”

The dock workers on the deck are still a little listless, what problem can be solved with 250 more people, you must know that there will be more than 3,000 people at the end of this year. Besides, most of those Malay women were given to the singles in the big cities. There are also many singles in shipyards, coal mines, brick kilns, and steel factories, and the conditions of those people are so good. It's definitely more competitive than these farmers in Lower Yihe Fort.

Captain Ventura shrugged helplessly when he saw that the response was not very enthusiastic. He also understood that Xiayihebao was a purely agricultural township, and its population had just exceeded 1,000 at the beginning of this year. Their "castle owner" Qin Yu once applied for the removal of the fort and the establishment of a township, but was rejected by Peng Zhicheng, the commissioner of the Yihe district, on the grounds that the total economic aggregate was too small. In fact, Peng Zhicheng was right, except for a small ship repair yard, there were no industrial facilities in Xiayihe Fort, there were no forests, no minerals, and the land was not very fertile. In addition to growing some vegetables and potatoes, the local residents only graze some goats, and the average annual income is less than 50 yuan, which is indeed very poor. The only reason for the settlement may be to supply and maintain the transport ships between the Changshan Iron Mine and the Ping'an Iron and Steel Works.

In addition to its remoteness and "poverty", this stronghold was also attacked from time to time by the Charruas and Gaucho bandits who crossed the West Ridge into the territory of the eastern coast. Compared with these bitter guys, the residents of Xiayihe Fort, who laugh at themselves for being poor all day long, are all big money. In particular, the fierce Charuya, who had nothing, often crossed the West Ridge in groups of three or five, sneaked into the vicinity of some villages outside the city of Lower Yi River Fort, and then stole the goats grazing by the people of the East Bank. If the people of the East Coast are not vigilant enough, they will sometimes make a cameo appearance as a robber, breaking into the homes of East Coast residents at night to rob and murder.

In the face of such a ferocious enemy, the inhabitants of the Lower Yi River Fort, in addition to organizing night patrols by the militia, also asked the military headquarters to send regular troops to clear the enemy. Naturally, the military department was so good that they transferred one of the most mobile troops, the cavalry battalion. The cavalry battalion led by Major Xu Yu had now expanded to more than 400 cavalry, and after receiving orders from the military headquarters, he moved almost all of his headquarters to the Yihe area to deter the charuas and gaucho bandits who were on the verge of rebellion under the influence of Spanish missionaries.

In mid-August, Major Xu Yu and more than 400 heavily armed cavalry rushed to Jose, about 30 kilometers from the Lower Yihe Fort. Pedro. Near the village of Varela. This place is rich in water and grass, the river is vertical and horizontal, and a number of small streams originating in the Xiling Mountains converge here, and finally form a fertile plain with abundant water and grass, suitable for grazing and farming. After the cavalry troops arrived here, they built a military camp with the assistance of about 300 Shandong immigrants who had migrated here, and then used it as a base to patrol around and constantly attack the Charuya and Gaocho bandits who crossed the border, so that the security situation around the Xiayi River Fort was significantly improved.

The inhabitants of the Lower River Fort yearn for the privileged life of the big city and criticize the monotonous and boring rural life in the interior. However, on the contrary, about 500 immigrants from Ninghai Prefecture in Shandong Province who came to Xiayihe Fort one after another to reclaim the land were quite satisfied with this land. Penniless, they only relied on shovels, nail rakes, and hoes issued by the government, and then relied on their hard-working hands to level more than 2,000 acres of farmland in one winter, making the local immigrants from southern Italy who talked all day looking at each other.

Although there are many weeds on the ground, and although the land is not very fertile, their love and dedication to their land are touching. In the Ming Dynasty, who has planted land for others for half a lifetime, they cherish the five acres of farmland allocated to them very much, and they also serve the cow assigned to each of them with special dedication. In this cold winter, they have been thinking about what to plant in the field after the beginning of spring, whether it is better to plant more expensive wheat, or to plant cheaper potatoes and corn. I heard that there is a reclamation bank branch here to lend a few sheep to everyone to raise by themselves, and there is such a good thing?! For the first time, they felt that maybe it would be worth it to come to this place from Shandong for nine lifetimes.

If only I could marry another daughter-in-law! Many Ming immigrants thought so.

"Mr. Castelli, what are you designing? Factory? Captain Ventura looked curiously at what Castelli was writing and drawing, what appeared to be a group of houses.

"To be precise, it's a complex of a dock and a railway station." "Yes," said Castelly, "the good days of the Lower Ichefort are coming. Shhh Okay, we'll talk about that later. All in all, all you need to know is that the Ministry of Transport is planning to build a railway north from the Lower Yi River Fort to a planned important city on the banks of a great northern river through the Canyon Fort (a newly planned town near the Cuevos Gorge). ”

"It looks like a big plan." Captain Ventura commented, "What does the government want to do?" Do you want to crammed all these Oriental peasants into those empty prairies? God, there are dangerous gaucho bandits and the charuas who are as nasty as bed bugs, and they will be dangerous without the protection of the army and the walls. ”

"The government will make a deployment." "Everyone knows that Fort Canyon is already on the edge of the de jure territory on the eastern coast, and that there are the villages of Charlua that have lived here for generations, and the gaucho bandits that roam the steppes, and it is a place that is not very friendly to any outsider. Therefore, the government should have been well prepared, and the cavalry battalion in the south should send some men to the north, and the eastern county side should also send an army to the west, plus a group of old residents who had migrated from the plan, a considerable number of whom were well-trained militiamen, and could handle almost any situation. ”

"I'm really going west." Captain Ventura sighed, "The area of the Kamakuang River in the north has recently been dredging its channel and heading into hilly areas, and the area of the Yi River in the south has finally taken action. But it's hard to say whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, since the western half of the eastern steppe is still nominally Spanish territory—and although they have not sent a few immigrants to it except for the missionaries, it will eventually leave a hidden danger that will prevent war from breaking out ......" (to be continued......