A heavy rail wagon, drawn by four horses, slowly stopped on the tracks with a screeching sound of brakes. Several soldiers jumped out of the carriage, and then Long Xu, the commander of the 103rd Company of the Army, tidied up his appearance and stepped on the pedals that the soldiers had placed and got out of the car.

This is Fort Canyon, a young town on the eastern edge of the West Ridge. The railway station and the nearby castle are under intense construction, and the building materials companies of the capital region are working day and night to produce large quantities of building materials, which are then transported by water to the Lower Yi Fort pier, and then transported by horse-drawn carriage or heavy rail wagon to the Canyon Fort.

There are about 1,000 South African laborers, more than 900 wage workers, and more than 500 Central and Southern European forced labor prisoners in labor camps active on the construction site, with a total number of nearly 2,500. Thanks to their efforts, all the work was carried out relatively quickly, especially the walls of the Canyon Fort, a small castle with a circumference of no more than a kilometer, which is now more than half completed and is expected to be completely completed by the end of this year.

Of the 2,500 people, 1,000 from South Africa were not paid. Their arrival on the East Coast is equivalent to serving the suzerain, but the time of this labor is a little longer. Of course, they themselves are not very disadvantaged, as long as they complete these three years of labor on time, then they will be stripped of their slave status and become free citizens of the six banners of the eight banners of South Africa, and they will also receive a severance pay. It wasn't a bad deal for them, so they were willing to do it until they were sent back to South Africa to be free, even though the work was hard and dangerous.

More than 900 hired workers come from a variety of sources, some of whom are local residents. about four or five hundred; There are also some Charuya and Guarani people who are attracted by high wages and relatively good living conditions. There were about a hundred people; At the end of the day, there were more than 300 homeless people who had entered the country illegally. Mostly Central and Southern Europeans. With the exception of local residents who work part-time jobs, who are paid a dime and a half a day, everyone else is paid only five cents a day because they cannot provide legal identification.

In addition to listing the person's name (up to four Chinese characters), age, gender, place of residence, appearance description and other basic elements, it also needs to be signed and sealed by the village head, militia director, and township head of the place of residence. These identification documents have a certain period of time, and they must be replaced when they expire, otherwise they will encounter a lot of trouble after expiration. For example, you must not look for a job with an expired ID that will be rejected unmistakably.

A little better of these outsiders. For example, those Charuya people also helped them get a short-term temporary identity certificate, which can give them a little more benefits, such as a project completion award or something. But those homeless people in Central and Southern Europe are not so lucky, they don't even have a temporary identity certificate, they are complete black households, they can only get money on a daily basis, and do one day at a time.

Surrounded by a platoon of heavily armed soldiers, Long Xu walked towards the city wall under construction, and along the way, some of the homeless people in the labor camp who were digging underground drainage ditches immediately respectfully stepped aside, took off their hats from their heads, and then bent their waists extremely low. It seems that this is not enough to show their respect.

Long Xu looked carefully, and these people were all naked. Some people don't even have any clothes on their lower bodies, but instead wear a piece of rag around their waists. It was already the middle of autumn, and even during the day the temperature often did not exceed fifteen degrees, and they were doing heavy physical labor, and they were covered in sweat, which undoubtedly increased their chances of getting sick. All of them did not have that healthy rosy color on their faces, but instead there were various symptoms of malnutrition. It can be seen that they have only been on the East Coast for a few days, and their physical condition is still poor, and they need to be supplemented for a period of time.

"They don't wear clothes for what they do, don't they know that they will get sick like this?" Long Xu looked at the prisoners in the distance who were still draining in the drainage ditch full of stagnant water, and said, "Severe cold, typhoid fever, rheumatism, and edema will all kill them. Do they really not care about their health at all? ”

No one could answer his words. It was a long time before a police officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was in charge of guarding these prisoners, stood up and said, "Sir, in fact, no one abuses them, but they themselves don't want to wear them." They were reluctant to throw away their original ragged linen clothes, let alone put on the sturdy, comfortable denim overalls we had handed them out, so they preferred to work naked, because the weather was not so unbearable for them. ”

Long Xu nodded silently after hearing this, and then walked around the places where these labor prisoners worked, and everywhere they went, these homeless people all bowed down respectfully to salute, as tame as a flock of little sheep. Many of them were barefoot and shirtless, which is perhaps common in Europe, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where the level of productivity is low, and the peasants, who are no different from serfs, live in this way. The people are numb, tame, and ignorant, and the remnants of the Middle Ages seem to be everywhere in them, but they are so dazzling in the current East Coast Republic of China, which makes Long Xu sigh with emotion.

There are at least 100 prisoners digging ditches here, but there are only five police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs who supervise their work. Maybe they've wandered enough and are tired, and they don't want to continue to run away and wander, or maybe they're just simply satisfied with their current life.

As if seeing Long Xu's doubts, the Ministry of Internal Affairs policeman explained: "In fact, we don't need to arrange too many people to monitor them at all, because there has not been a single case of escaped labor prisoners. They are very tame, they feel very relieved that they have dry and warm wooden huts, meals such as potatoes and salted fish, soft bedding that smells of the sun, and they work all night without having to carry a lamp, and they even receive a small salary. In a short period of time, I don't think anyone will think of running away within half a year or a year, because it doesn't make sense. Escaping from a labor camp means that you are a homeless person again, you are still wanted, they have had enough of such days, they don't want to repeat this nightmare again. ”

"The potatoes and wheat cakes they eat here are coarse food, but they are distributed by weight and there is nothing lacking. They can also eat whole salted fish to replenish their salt, while also drinking some hot soup with floating oil foam or a few fatty slices. Although the work is heavy, and although it becomes wet again in the otherwise dry cabin when it rains, it is much more comfortable than lying on the wet grass when wandering in the wilderness, where they have at least one bed and a hot bath every day. And in the wild, when you encounter this kind of unlucky weather, you are likely to unfortunately contract lung disease, and then shrink in a corner where no one cares, and die quietly with countless worries and nostalgia. The police officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs from Naples continued, adding, "It is all the result of a long conversation with them, in fact they cherish their current life and are looking forward to obtaining an official identity document in a year's time." They get along well and don't need to be treated like vicious savages. ”

"Try to give them good treatment when possible." After listening to this, Long Xu advised, "This will help attract more people to the east coast." A new town is already being planned on the hill northwest of Fort Canyon, and the railroad is about to be extended from here, and we need more people to help us build this road, and these homeless people are the right laborers. They work hard and can do a lot of work for you with just the most basic pay and low wages, and I hope the more of them, the better. ”

The new town in the northwest mentioned by Long Xu is located near the village of Freilly in what would become Uruguay, and is an important intermediate node in the Northwest Corridor railway project. According to the plan, the people of the east coast would build a railway station and a small masonry fortress about a kilometer around the city, and at least 1,000 people would settle there. The first two hundred Ming immigrants and two hundred Polish women were ready to set out, and they were to first build a temporary settlement there for a thousand people with their industrious hands, and then the follow-up troops would drive through.

In order to ensure their safety, the cavalry battalion, which has been expanded to more than 600 people, will also send more than 100 cavalry to escort them along the way, and will eventually be stationed in this place named Hundred Feet Cliff Fort on the map. The name also commemorates the first settlers here – a group of guards from the back of the 100-foot cliff in Weihai, Daming Mountain, who would be the first conquerors from the Old World to set foot here.

The distance between the Hundred Foot Cliff Fort and the Canyon Fort is long, and you have to cross the low hilly area, so the road is not very easy to walk. Although most of the planned railway lines pass through some gentle hilly slopes, and the altitude will not exceed 50 meters at most, it is still a big test for the railways that were built in the past on the flat grasslands. Because this means that the amount of work is much larger, and the materials and manpower that need to be consumed have also increased exponentially.

But correspondingly, if this railway is successfully opened to traffic, then it really means that the people on the east coast have officially entered the area west of Xiling, and they are one step closer to the planned special steel production base in the Corrales mining area. The north-west route from Fort Lower is like a corridor to the mines, passing through Fort Canyon, Fort Hundred Cliffs, Merlot, and then across the Black River (Negro) to Corrales, where the resource-rich mining area is firmly in the hands of the people of the East Bank. (To be continued......)