In mid-March 1645, Xinhuagang was flooded with torrential rain.

The last ships transporting migrants from the East had just left the port, and the five Scud-class shear-class transports had just left to follow the warm Mozambican current and northwesterly winds, heading to the mainland, of course, with a short break in the South African River Harbour. In addition to the last batch of about 2,000 Ming immigrants from the previous shipping season (1643-44), the five ships also carried a large number of tropical specialties of the New China region: sisal, coconut, hardwood, coal (to be shipped at the port of Tacheng), honey, hump cattle and other agricultural and animal husbandry products or mineral products.

When they arrived from the mainland, they were loaded with fabrics, leather goods, machinery and equipment, metal tools, weapons and ammunition and other manufactured goods. Even some precious woods such as red sandalwood, red sandalwood, and ebony, which originated in New China, were shipped back to the mainland, and then sold back in the form of high-end furniture, musical instruments, carriage bodies, spear shafts, and other finished products. For this, the local residents paid a lot of money, and this is also the place where Shi Qinjie, the captain of the New China Pioneer Team, who is currently active in the local area, is extremely dissatisfied: New China is too lacking in all kinds of technical talents, and its development is too lagging behind.

However, let's not talk about the local talent is also quite scarce now, after all, the cultivation of talents has a long process, and it cannot be achieved overnight. For this reason, before Shi Qinjie went to the central government to run the project, he secretly instructed the former naval sergeant Kyle, who had recently acted as the mayor of Xinhuagang, to find a way to intercept some technical talents from the Ming Dynasty immigrants. A considerable part of this group of people are the county residents of Yucheng and Shanghe counties that Guo Sheng moved over as a whole, since the population of the entire county has been brought over. Then there are naturally many talents from all walks of life.

For this. Kyle, who was deeply impressed by Shi Qinjie's confession, also secretly found a group of people in the local area. Let them take advantage of the fact that the immigrants transported from Australia are waiting for the ship in the port to recuperate, and through various means such as emotional solicitation, deception, intimidation, and inducement, some of the immigrants with good skills will be intercepted. The reason for the interception was nothing more than that they were too poor to sail long distances, and the captains of the ships responsible for transporting the migrants naturally did not specifically target them in this matter, so they basically turned a blind eye and let them go. Anyway, after returning to the mainland, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the New Huaxia Pioneer Team will have a lawsuit, and it will be their business!

However, after all, he relied too much on the local area, and Kyle did not dare to go too far, so he only concentrated on attracting and intercepting a group of carpenters, doctors, and some old farmers who were urgently needed in the New China region. Naturally, carpenters are assigned to work in local wood processing factories. Shi Qinjie had long wanted to expand the size of the wood processing factory and gradually enable it to produce some local consumer goods, such as wooden bowls, chopsticks, musical instruments, horse-drawn carriages, etc. It's not that these things can't be produced locally, but that the production is not enough and the cost is very high. There are currently only a handful of technicians in the area who can produce these "high-end" products, and the majority of apprentices in the timber processing factories are currently only doing menial tasks such as processing logs.

With these carpenters of the Ming Dynasty with a certain technical foundation, coupled with the apprentices they brought, over time, they will definitely be able to develop the wood processing industry in New China. In Shi Qinjie's eyes, the new Huaxia region, which is rich in high-quality timber resources, actually imports a large number of wood products from the mainland. This cannot but be said to be a "shame" and something he cannot accept. Wait until the local talent training mechanism is gradually on the right track. He is very confident that he will reverse the current "abnormal" import situation of New China. At that time, Xinhuaxia will export a large number of wood products such as mahogany furniture and high-end musical instruments to the mainland to earn high profits.

In addition to carpenters, there is also a great demand for experienced farmers in the New Huaxia region. These people are generally not young, and it is not easy to reach New China from the Heishui region through Australia, so it makes sense to keep them here. Nowadays, the agricultural development of the new China region has not been very good, and the annual output of grain is just enough for local consumption (Xinhua Port and Tacheng Port), and a slight surplus is exported to Australia.

The main types of grain are corn and sweet potato, which are deep-rooted crops that are easy to grow and have high yields, and the cover is therefore a tropical maritime climate, and the leaching effect is relatively vigorous, so it is mostly a relatively barren brick red soil. In fact, brick red soil is not without nutrients at all, it is mainly because the nutrients of the surface soil are carried away by rainwater, so it is relatively poor. However, the middle and lower layers of the soil were rich in nutrients, and even some of the nutrients in the top soil were washed down by the rain, so the new Chinese colony promoted the deep-rooted crops of corn and sweet potato according to local conditions to minimize the negative effects of leaching.

However, it is obviously not good to always be like this, after all, corn and sweet potatoes are not nutritious enough, and they have a certain negative effect on human growth, especially height. Jun did not see that the height of the Chinese in the late Qing Dynasty was generally short, and it was not necessarily without the "credit" of sweet potatoes. As a result, local officials have been looking for ways to grow other crops to improve the local food mix, so as not to import wheat from South Africa and even the Ottoman Empire, often taking up valuable transportation resources. Considering the hot and humid climate and abundant precipitation, Shi Qinjie and others initially promoted rice cultivation as a key agricultural project in the next stage.

To be honest, the conditions near Xinhuagang are not too suitable for rice cultivation. The best rice-growing region in Madagascar is the central plateau in the middle of the island, where the climate is relatively cool, the land is fertile, and the rainfall is not bad. However, it was still the territory of the Melinas, who had established several feudal kingdoms and fought against each other, the most powerful of which was on the verge of annexing the entire region. Such a situation is obviously not something that the people of the East Coast can covet. Moreover, because the people on the east coast occupied the Tacheng port area that they had originally peeped into, the relationship between the two sides has not been very harmonious, and it is not very realistic to trade with them to buy some rice. What's more, Shi Qinjie was quite suspicious that given the situation of wars in the Central Plateau region from time to time and the backward agricultural production conditions in the local area, it is difficult to say whether they have surplus grain.

Therefore, you still have to rely on yourself for everything. This time, Shi Qinjie chose the location on the western peninsula, which is only separated from Xinhua Port by a waterway, that is, the peninsula where the airport of Antsiranana City was later located. The peninsula's primeval forests have been cut down to clear large tracts of open space, and a small wharf has been built on the side facing Xinhua Port to accommodate small fishing boats or small steamers. A few years ago, a gunpowder factory was built on the island, with less than 100 workers, divided into two parts: a pig workshop and a dispensing workshop. Among them, the pig workshop currently has hundreds of fat pigs, and produces a large amount of manure every day, which is transported from Xinhua Port by fishing boats, together with many cattle and sheep manure, as a raw material for the production of nitrate fields in the dispensing workshop, and the output is also quite good, and the gunpowder used in the Far East was transported from here at the earliest.

Now Shi Qinjie wants to open up some rice-growing areas here. The main reason for choosing this place is that the land here is slightly more fertile than that of Xinhuagang, and there is more fertilizer for farmers here (pig farms nearby), which can add some fertility to the barren brick red soil, and can greatly improve the soil texture in the dry season with less precipitation.

However, at present, the area of these rice-growing areas is not planned to be large, because the characteristics of rice can easily breed a large number of mosquitoes, which brings great danger to rice farmers. You must know that the sanitary conditions in Xinhua Port have improved so much at this stage, and the annual mortality rate is still hovering around 10%. If it weren't for the migration of some residents from time to time, the population of Xinhuagang and Tacheng would have been in a state of negative growth over the years.

When the Zheng family opened up Taiwan, the annual mortality rate of immigrants reached an alarming 30%, and most of the immigrants from the Fujian region of the mainland died in three years, and even Zheng Chenggong himself died of malaria, which is also an important reason why the Zheng family's power has always been slow to develop. However, during the later Japanese occupation, after the Japanese invested a lot of effort to improve the environment and promote hygienic living habits, Taiwan's annual mortality rate remained at about 10% for many years, and malaria "played an important role" in this. We can see from this that the tropics are really hell on earth in this era! The biggest fatal factor in such a high mortality rate is disease, mainly malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes.

Due to the scarcity of medicines, the vast number of people in the New China area, except for officials, technicians, and soldiers, are still unable to cover the treatment scope of valuable cinchona bark powder. Most people are left to fend for themselves after suffering from the distorted form of malaria, and if they are lucky, they may be able to go into remission, but most people are not so lucky, they can only die in agony. Perhaps only when the population of cinchona trees planted in the nearby mountains north of Ping'an County in China expands will they have a chance to be treated, at least for the time being, the precious medicine will only be prioritized for officials, technicians and soldiers, and other people who are not qualified will not be able to get this life-saving medicine even if they donate their entire wealth.

Therefore, in the area of Xixiang (the peninsula west of Xinhua Port), rice growers must pay strict attention to protective measures. At the same time, backwaterholes such as certain areas in the vicinity of rice paddies must also be filled in to minimize the breeding of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. At the same time, some freshwater fish will be stocked in the paddy fields. These fish feed on mosquito larvae, which can effectively slow down the reproduction of mosquitoes in rice paddy areas and increase the economic income of farmers.

The old farmers who came from Shandong, although they basically have no experience in planting rice, have a lot of things in common, and they are better than those stunned young people who have never done anything, so they have been intercepted a lot. (To be continued......)