Early morning on May 25th. It's been a good few days, and it's been dry everywhere in the camp. Shou Daoist had just come out of the patient placement room, and now the number of people staying in the ward had risen to 18, including even a Eight Banners supervisor.

There are two already frail Khoisan red people who can't hold on, they should have falciparum malaria, due to the poor physique, now the interval between attacks is getting shorter and shorter, almost once or twice a day, and there are also a lot of rashes on the face, it is estimated that they will not die in these two days.

The mosquitoes on the Falklands are mainly Anopheles Falklands, Anopheles gambia and lethal Anopheles mosquitoes, of which the bite rate of Anopheles Falklands and Gambia Anopheles mosquitoes is about the same, both of which are 15-20%, and the lethal Anopheles mosquitoes are only 0.5%. The prevalence of Anopheles mosquitoes in the Gambia is 1.7%, the vast majority of which are Plasmodium falciparum, and the other two mosquitoes have a prevalence of about 0.6%, all of which are Plasmodium falciparum.

It can be seen that the main vector of malaria transmission in the Falklands is Anopheles gambiene. This mosquito does not inhabit many human dwellings, but is an exogenous mosquito that bites mainly when the slaves are out to work. However, fortunately, the peak period of this mosquito bite is between 1 and 4 o'clock in the morning, and there are not many times during the day, so the impact on these Eight Banners slaves is not particularly large, otherwise the number of infected people is only even more.

After inspecting the patient's house, Captain Shou called Admiral Kyle to his side and assigned him today's task first. As of yesterday, the land in the planned main urban area has been leveled and the foundation has been laid. All that's left is to start building. But now there are still a lot of cement limes. There is a serious shortage of bricks. Most of the only ones were used to repair small earthen kilns, toilets, and sewer facilities, and there were only 10,000 bricks left for repairing houses in the main city.

What Shou Daoist wanted to explain to Kyle was to ask him to organize people to build a few brick houses as warehouses as soon as possible, so that some important materials such as muskets, artillery, ammunition, armor, medicine, cloth, and salt could be properly stored, so as not to suddenly find that they could not be used because of poor storage when they were to be used, which would be too stupid.

Shou Daoist plans to transfer another 50 people to the small earthen kiln to help today, and then there will be fewer people left in the camp in the main city, excluding those who do odd jobs and are sick, and the available slaves are only about 110-120 people. Shou Daoist left all these slaves to Sergeant Kyle. He also left him with 10 armed overseers to supervise the slaves to work hard.

After the camp was explained, Shou Daoist took 32 musketeers, 15 Eight Banner supervisors, and escorted 150 slave workers towards the small earthen kiln camp. The land over there has been cleared out, the foundation has been laid, and it is time to get to work.

Amid the sound of the overseer's command and whip, the slaves entered the construction site and began to work. In a place like the Falklands, the sunny weather can't last long, so there has always been a sense of urgency in Shoudaoshi's heart. The slaves began their preparations under the guidance of several former brick kiln workers, some of whom were mixing grout with cement, lime, and sand. Some people are using some wheelbarrows to transport bricks, while others have begun to build some of the outer walls with red bricks.

After seeing that Pei Soning took care of everything here in an orderly manner. Shou Daoist returned to the main camp with confidence. Dozens of slaves on this side of the main camp were sitting on the ground resting at this time, they untied the headscarves on their faces, and drank the cool white water in the cowhide water bladder next to them while wiping their sweat. Several overseers and soldiers sat on a nearby wooden pier and feasted on the coconut fruit that the slaves had plucked. Under the dual effect of bright sunshine and strong sea breezes, almost all the mosquitoes on the main camp have disappeared. Priest Shou reclined under a tall coconut tree, eating the fat coconut fruit offered by the overseer of the Eight Banners, while looking at the beautiful coastline ahead.

Shou Taoist is sure that if this place is developed, it will definitely be a treasure land. The bay is rich in fish, especially barracuda, swordfish, lobster, sea cucumber and other seafood; If nothing else is said on the shore, this large coconut grove and the dense red sandalwood forest on the mountain to the south are a huge wealth; What's more, the precipitation here is so abundant, if the water conservancy facilities are built, it will not be a problem to grow rice three times a year. Shou Daoist pondered, this place is really much stronger than his hometown in Shandong. Due to its proximity to the coast and the rain, it is warm all year round. Even in the rainy hot season, the temperature can hardly climb above 35 degrees, let alone the cool season, when the hottest part of the day is just 31 degrees, except that it is a little too humid.

As for why the Executive Committee built this stronghold far from the homeland, Shou Daoist still knows the reason for the Daoist Dao, and he also raised his hands in favor of this matter. Especially now when the Ming Dynasty is in chaos, displaced people are everywhere, and order is on the verge of complete collapse. In his early years, when he traveled all over the world, he often saw that the roadside was full of hunger, and the people were easy to eat, and the situation was miserable. I hope that after the completion of this stronghold, the local fleet can also be greatly expanded, and then it can sail directly to the Ming Dynasty and find a way to transport back all the displaced people who can't survive.

As for whether the homeless people were willing or not, Shou Daoist did not think about this issue at all. Are there such stupid people? In Daming, you can't even drink gruel, so you can come to the east coast to eat sorghum rice every day, as well as beef and sea fish, so why don't fools come? Moreover, after the local fleet really sailed to the coastal waters of Daming, it was up to these homeless people to call the shots. According to the temper of these proud soldiers and fierce generals on the east coast, it is estimated that they will go directly ashore to kidnap people when the time comes.

As long as there is a population, it is easy to do things. How can such a fertile and fertile land be left to those backward and barbaric natives? Of course, it is still handed over to our Chinese who are good at farming to live and develop, and in the future, we will leave a few reserved areas for you natives to reproduce in them.

After the reverie, Shou Daoist threw the leftover coconut shells into the wooden trash can, and then began to urge the slaves to get to work.

This laid-back state of life lasted until late June. On June 20th, the small earthen kiln, which had been tossed intermittently for nearly a month, was finally successfully put into operation. After burning firewood for three days to drive away moisture, it is now ready for official use. Before that, a large area of sheds had already been erected next to the small earthen kiln, and the sheds were full of neatly stacked mud bricks, a total of 20,000 pieces.

Pei Soonen instructed the slaves to carefully stack the mud bricks in small carts and place them in designated places in the kiln, and then close the kiln door. Under the canopy outside the kiln door are piles of branches, leaves, and thatch, which are collected to burn bricks. There is no way, they don't have coal on hand at the moment, so they can only use firewood and grass to burn. It doesn't matter much anyway, it's just that people need to work hard to collect firewood and grass.

As for manpower, they are not too short for the time being. Of course, if there were no new slaves imported for some time, they might have faced a shortage of manpower – all because of the terrible disease of malaria.

From the 5th of last month to now, it has been a month and a half since the landing. So far, the number of malaria infections has gradually risen to 42 out of the 381 original 300 slaves, 30 Eight Banner miners, 48 riflemen of the 101st Company of the Army, and three senior managers, all of whom have falciparum malaria. Most of them were slaves, 36 in all; In addition, there are 4 supervisors of the Eight Banners and 2 officers and soldiers of the 101st Company.

With the exception of two soldiers who were cured with the help of valuable cinchona bark powder, all the other sick people did not receive any treatment. At present, the death toll has reached 10 people, there are still 4 people on the verge of death, and the rest of the people are still in good health, and some antibodies have been produced in the body under adequate nutritional intake, and they are currently fighting against malaria, but the situation is not optimistic.

The morale of the early envelope slaves, overseers, and soldiers was now somewhat low, especially among the slaves, who often had to work in mosquito-infested areas. If it weren't for the fact that their families were still holding hostages in Fort River, and that it was inaccessible as far as the eye could see, it would have been a death to flee, and most of these people would have started fleeing long ago.

In addition, two people screamed in the woods and were bitten by poisonous snakes and died; One died of other acute diseases; Two people were injured by stones while excavating stones, and one of them was seriously injured and was basically sentenced to death. In this way, 41 of the original 300 slaves have lost their labor, which shows the hardship and danger of developing the tropical wilderness. It is important to know that this is still in the case of a certain understanding of the harshness of the environment in advance and relatively full preparations, plus this place is still a coastal zone with better conditions, if it is a tropical rainforest in the inland area, the loss is estimated to be even more amazing.

In the face of such a loss, Shou Daoist was indifferent. Because all the dead are slaves, and no matter how many slaves die to him, it is only a number, and it is not worth deploring. The only thing he cared about was how the construction was going, after all, when his superiors assessed him, they would only assess the progress of the construction, not how many slaves were left in the hands of him.

On June 23, the first batch of red bricks fired by small earthen kilns was released from the kiln, removing unusable pieces such as crushing and deformation, and a total of nearly 19,000 complete red bricks were obtained. At this point, the construction of the Anziranana colony can finally begin to speed up. (To be continued......)