According to Li Yi, the slaves should not be too resistant to such conditions, after all, it should be considered a "good thing" that they can have the opportunity to get rid of their current hopeless life of working until death. Of course, Li Yi and Mo Ming both selectively ignored the question of how many of these indigenous slaves who were exported to the Changshanbao iron ore area would return to South Africa alive after the completion of the period, and they were not interested in discussing.

Mo Ming and Li Yi said that they would do it while doing it, anyway, most of the cabins of these transport ships were empty when they returned to the mainland, and transporting some people back would be used as ballast. At present, the Fort of the River has more than 5,000 slaves (plus the 3,000 people captured this time), who are basically farming, grazing, and building infrastructure around the Fort of the River. Although their labor intensity is not small, but to be honest, the living conditions are not bad, although the food is coarse, but it is full, compared with the previous kind of "free" life of hunger and fullness, it is really difficult to say which is stronger or weaker. Therefore, the desire of these slaves to escape was not very strong, and this became a great spectacle of the river fort.

Mo Ming led the militia to pick and choose among these slaves, and finally chose a thousand people, most of them Khoisan reds, and a few Bantu blacks, who were the bargaining chips he sent back to his homeland to bargain with the Executive Committee. At the same time, he himself decided to follow back to Dongfang Harbor to try to make a relationship and ask for some benefits for the River Fort.

After the selection, the remaining nearly 4,000 slaves, Mo Ming broke them up and divided them into two tribes, which were under unified management with the remaining six tribes that were currently attached to the East Coast. Each tribe was awarded a flag, with six "free" tribes awarding red, yellow, blue, green, purple, and gray flags, and two slave tribes awarding black and white flags.

There is no fixed set to which tribe each indigenous member belongs to. For example, indigenous people who have violated the laws of the East Coast and are tried guilty are demoted to the black and white flags. become a slave; Equally. Natives convicted of desertion and rebellion will be executed, and their immediate family members will be relegated to the black and white flags and become slaves. Slaves in the black and white banners, if they have done excellent work and fought bravely, upon the recommendation of the officers on the east coast, they and their families can be pardoned and promoted to the six banners.

With such a highly mobile system, it is possible to fully mobilize the indigenous people. in order to reach their full potential and better serve the people of the East Coast. At present, there are six or seven thousand indigenous "Eight Banners" in the hands of Hezhong Fort, and these natives who have undergone some reorganization and have relatively advanced organizational methods will surely become the vanguard of the people on the east coast to open up South Africa.

After everything was ready, on August 4, Mo Ming handed over everything to Liu Ang, the deputy captain of the South African Pioneer Team, and then returned to the port of Orient on a naval warship and several transport ships laden with slaves, ivory, furs, and liquor.

After Mo Ming left, Liu Ang immediately announced that the Fort in the River had entered a state of mobilization. Anyway, it's already winter, and there's not much work to do in the fields. In addition to maintaining the necessary manpower to expand the city walls, forts, and dig ditches. The rest of them were to undergo intensive military training. In addition to these East Coast people, the rest of the adult males of the "Eight Banners" tribe outside the city, except for the coolies who worked, had to undergo drills every three days under the supervision of the East Coast officers. For a time, inside and outside the city of Hezhong Fort, there were guns and cannons all day long, and the sound of killing was shocking, and the training was very lively.

The people of the East Coast were busy, and the English from afar were not idle, as they laboriously built their new territory in the Cape Town area.

At this time, more than 100 kilometers away on the coast of Cape Town, an old friend of the people of the East Coast - George. Heywood Knight and Nick. Warnum was walking along the beach, chatting casually. The cold winds blowing from the Atlantic Ocean are somewhat strong, and the midwinter in South Africa during the Xiaoice period is still a little cold. Heywood and Nick simply found a wooden shed built by the sea, smoking a pipe while looking at Table Mountain not far away.

"It must be God's table." Nick looked at the long mountain and said, "It's incredible." Mr. Heywood, I think we can build a lighthouse on it, which will provide a position for the ships of the kingdom sailing at night, and Cape Town will surely become the pearl of Africa, which is your glory! ”

"It's a good idea to build a lighthouse, Nick, but not now." Knight Heywood took a hard puff on his cigarette, then said with a blank look in his eyes, "Our first priority now is to repair Fort Good Hope. Fort Good Hope is the heart of Cape Town, and I can't even sleep well at night without repairing the castle and forts. Nick, you don't know, ever since I heard that the people of the east coast of the north had begun to slaughter the barbarians, I feared that one day they would suddenly storm Cape Town, just as they had stormed the castles of The Gambia. It was a barbaric, bloodthirsty, brutal group of scoundrels who refused to spare even the peaceful inhabitants of the Gambian trading post, and they must all be demonic mobs, God! ”

Nick looked at Knight Heywood with pity, the weak man seemed to be frightened since he was captured by the Easterners in The Gambia, and perhaps he had left some bad memories in the Eastsiders' prison that he would never forget. But fate played tricks on them, and Nick and Knight Heywood, two defeated men of the East Coast, were now sent together to build a colonial city in the far south of Africa to build a colonial city that would be vital to the East India Company and the Kingdom of England.

Now that the two sides are grasshoppers on a rope, Nick couldn't help but comfort Knight Heywood: "The people of the East Coast have just signed a peace agreement with us, they don't dare to risk provoking the kingdom to go to war with us, they definitely don't dare!" All we have to do is watch out for some indigenous attacks. Didn't we meet a small tribe of natives the other day, and they seemed to be very hostile to us outsiders, and I thought maybe they were taking us for those of the East Coast. But the armed forces of these indigenous tribes are pitifully weak, and perhaps we don't have to worry too much. ”

Knight Heywood spat out a mouthful of milky white eyes, and then said, "The construction of the castle of Good Hope must be accelerated!" We've been building it for almost a month, and I don't want to wait too long, so you'll have to make that clear to Aaron. It's going to be the coldest season, and I'm going to move in before the snow falls! ”

Nick nodded silently, and began to calculate the division of manpower in his mind. The East India Company's colonization of Cape Town was no small task, and they transported more than 1,600 people to the city at one time. Of course, there were far more than 1,600 people before departure, and the brutal ocean voyages ruthlessly weeded out a considerable number of the infirm or unfortunate. Of these 1,600 people, the landless peasants from the Midlands of England made up the vast majority, about 1,000; The remaining 600-odd people came from the areas of Ireland that had been conquered by England.

After the colony landed on June 30 of this year, large-scale construction began. However, the new immigrants were generally in poor health after months of sea voyages, and many of them became ill as soon as they arrived, which made the construction of colonies by the British extremely slow. Now, more than a month has passed, and they have not even completely unloaded the supplies on the ship, and a lot of cement, lime, and bricks are still stacked in the cabin.

Due to the poor physical condition of the personnel and the rainy weather in the Cape Town area, the construction progress of the British colonists on the shore was not satisfactory. They built a castle facing Tablebay, Fort Good Hope, but despite half the effort on hand, at the current pace, it is estimated that it will not be completed until the end of September or even October. As for other parts, such as residential houses, port facilities, city walls, forts, etc., progress is even more slow. Nick is pessimistic and predicts that it may not be until the first half of next year if all of this is completed.

Hearing Knight Heywood's obviously anxious and impatient tone at this moment, Nick, who was Heywood's deputy, had to decide to send some more Irish farmers to participate in the construction of Fort Good Hope. Even forcing them to work 18 hours a day. After all, the sooner they built the Lookout Fort, the sooner they were safe.

Thinking of this, Nick couldn't help but feel full of resentment towards the East Coast people again. These scoundrels, the scumbags, slaughtered the barbarians of the northern plains, and removed all their grain, cattle and sheep, so that the noble English had to build the castle with mud in the cold and rainy winter climate of Cape Town, and many of them fell ill from it, and the settlers were generally resentful.

And that's not all, these unscrupulous gangsters even organized the hands to catch all the fish in the northern rivers, and the bison herds were also driven or hunted by them, so that the English could not obtain valuable meat protein supplements on the spot. The migrants had to eat pea soup and nibble on unpalatable black bread to satisfy their hunger, which further added to their resentment.

But fortunately, a while ago, a stupid indigenous tribe rushed to the Cape Town area in order to escape the slaughter of the people on the east coast, and ran into the English who were building a castle on the coast. After a modest battle, the English easily routed the indigenous tribe and captured more than 500 of them, as well as a small amount of grain, cattle and sheep. After the capture of more than 500 people, they continued to do the painstaking work of leveling the foundations and digging ditches under the close supervision of the English. The intensity of the work has resulted in dozens of deaths so far, and about dozens of others have fled while the British were not looking.

Alas! Nick sighed heavily. There is no way to do it now, in order to speed up the construction period, I can only fill in the lives of these natives, hoping to satisfy the Knight Heywood. (To be continued......)