Wang Wuwei was looking forward to the arrival of this trade fleet, which brought ironware, cloth, silk, tea, porcelain,*, muskets and other daily necessities, which could not only deepen the ties between the Ming and these indigenous tribes, but also exchange the furs accumulated in Los Angeles City for the materials needed in the city in the previous year.

If the fur trade was settled in the Ming silver dollar, the city of Los Angeles would charge the natives about 0.12 yuan for a beaver pelt, and the city of Los Angeles would sell it to the fleet for 12 yuan a piece, and the fleet would have shipped it back to China for 120 yuan a piece.

A beaver pelt is about 1.3-1.4 pounds, and it is extremely easy to pack and transport. In the past year, Los Angeles City has accumulated 17,000 beaver skins, 2,180 sea otter skins, 3,300 muskrat skins, 1,122 bear skins, 28,812 deer skins, etc., which are finally converted into 358,000 silver dollars.

10% of this purchase price will be deducted as the cost of fur acquisition in the following year; 10% will be deducted as a pension for the North American garrison, which will be paid in a lump sum after the expiration of the garrison service; 10% as a tax paid to the imperial court; 25% is used for administrative affairs and staff salaries in Los Angeles City, New Xiamen and New Hangzhou; The remaining 45 per cent will be used to fund surveys and colonization operations on the west coast of North America.

The fleet brought only a small portion of the banknotes, which were mainly offset by the cargo on board. Of course, on the inhospitable west coast of America, a bill or a silver dollar is less popular with the city's inhabitants than a bottle of rum.

As long as it wasn't impossible to think about it, no one would take the silver dollar to Mexico, thousands of miles away, to trade. For these immigrants, prices in Mexico are no different from open looting. Even the Spaniards of San Diego preferred to trade in Los Angeles rather than trade in Mexico.

Los Angeles now has more than 1,100 inhabitants, about 560 Ming immigrants and garrisons, 347 local natives, 3 or 40 Europeans left behind from San Diego and passing merchant ships, and more than 100 Ming immigrants from Mexico.

These Ming people all followed the Spanish galleons to Mexico, and at first the Spaniards treated them well, allowing them to run businesses and crafts in Mexico City. However, as Spain's war in Europe became tighter, the treasury began to empty, and it increased its economic plundering of the American colonies.

The Gatyupings from Spain began to suppress the commerce and handicrafts run by the Chinese in order to maintain the high profits of domestic goods in Spain. But the smuggling of the British and Ming people into Mexico from both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans not only made the Gatyupins' move futile, but also ran the market for high-priced Spanish goods.

The goods smuggled from the Ming Dynasty to Mexico, and even the British smuggled goods were also suppressed, but fortunately, the Ming Dynasty's navigation industry was not developed enough, otherwise the British smuggling ships would have to be turned into pirates.

The smuggling network covered by local native whites is naturally not something that the Gachopings can easily identify, so they can only suppress the visible competitors, which are the Chinese in Mexico.

The Chinese immigrants in Mexico originated from the beginning of the Manila galleon trade route, first with a few Chinese sailors, and then with some Chinese from Southeast Asia. There are about one or two thousand people in total, but with their families and descendants in Mexico, there are about 3,000 Chinese in this group.

In the past, the native whites of Mexico would naturally not interfere with the Gajupings' suppression of these Chinese, and in their opinion, such actions also shared their pressure.

But now, the native-born whites who cooperated with the Ming in the smuggling trade naturally won't sit idly by. These Chinese would not only become their best helpers, but also make them gain the favor of the Ming Emperor, so under the persuasion of some native whites, the Gatyupings finally expelled the Chinese from Mexico City.

Some Chinese accepted the invitation of these native-born whites to become part of the Daming-Mexico smuggling syndicate. Others, hearing of the existence of Los Angeles, moved with their families to their own place, no longer willing to be angry with white people.

For Wang Wuwei, it is always good to have more Chinese come to Los Angeles. In this desolate West Coast, he really couldn't trust anyone but his kind. He was not ignorant of the bad things that the European colonizers were doing in Mexico.

Just if you want to feed more residents, you will eventually have to rely on agricultural development. Although the Los Angeles Basin is fertile, it is also very labor-intensive to clear the shrubs and trees on the plains.

According to a British sailor who ran from coast to coast, for every acre of land on the east coast, it cost £4 and 10 shillings, and a man could carve out a maximum of 1-3 acres of wasteland a year.

1 acre is equivalent to 6 Chinese acres, after Wang Wuwei's experiment, he felt that the Englishman said it was still good, a person can open up about 15-20 acres of land, the cost is about 15-20 yuan.

If it weren't for the high profits of the fur trade, he would have struggled to make up his mind to develop the plains around Los Angeles.

However, even with the high profits of the fur trade, it is a great problem to move enough people from the Ming Dynasty. According to the calculation of the voyage in the past few years, it will cost about 30 yuan for each immigrant to the North American continent, and about 65-70 yuan a year to feed an immigrant in North America. First-year immigrants will have little income, and it would be nice to be able to adapt to the climate and survive.

So, before an immigrant can support themselves, the city of Los Angeles has to spend $100 on them. Wang Wuwei was ready to accept the British sailor's suggestion that every immigrant arriving in North America must sign a four-year service agreement with the city of Los Angeles to repay their ferry tickets and the cost of room and board for the first year. At the end of the four-year contract, they were given an axe, a hoe, 20 acres of cooked land and 280 acres of raw land.

The contract proposed by Wang Wuwei won the agreement of the new immigrants outside the Cao family. Although he was much more honest after being taught a bloody lesson by Gu Changsha on the ship, the Cao family was not happy to be a contract laborer after getting off the ship.

They wanted to use their belongings to offset the cost of the ferry ticket and the first year's room and board, and then asked Wang Wuwei to set aside an area in the city for them to live and operate. In return, they would open a private school to educate the city's children for free.

Although there were a number of students in the Los Angeles Army, they were busy surveying the terrain of the west coast of North America and surveying species and resources, and they did not have the time to open schools. I want to wait for the country to send teachers, but I don't know what year or month it will take.

Therefore, Wang Wuwei only thought for a moment and accepted the Cao family's proposal. However, he asked the Cao family to split into three teams, only one team was allowed to live in Los Angeles City, and the other two teams were to go to New Xiamen and New Hangzhou.

After a stalemate for a while, the Cao family finally didn't dare to offend the supreme military commander in North America, and turned around and went back to divide the belongings.

After the trading fleet repaired in Los Angeles for five days, two ships carrying the Cao family and some sergeants went to New Xiamen and New Hangzhou to change guards, and the other three ships continued south to Acapulco.

At about this time, Zheng He and Flying Tiger, under the guidance of the Spanish pilot, finally walked out of the V-shaped Strait of Magellan without danger. The fierce westerly winds in the strait and the crystal clear glaciers on the cliffs left a deep impact on everyone on board.

With two experienced sailors hired in Cadiz at high salaries, the Zheng He and the Flying Tiger found the southeast trade wind belt in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after leaving Madeira, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Rio de Janeiro 25 days later.

Although the Portuguese Pedro Álvarez Cabral was the first to discover Guanabara Bay, it was a group of French people who built the castle here. It wasn't until the French built the castle that the Portuguese realized the value of the castle and sent troops to capture it.

After nearly 100 years of Portuguese operation, Rio de Janeiro has become the largest Portuguese colony in southern Brazil. However, the most prosperous part of Brazil is the sugar region port on the northeast coast, which was once the center of sugar supply in Europe.

It's just that the northeast coast of Brazil is suffering from a catastrophe because of its wealth. The Dutch were attacking there fiercely, and just before the Akito arrived, the Dutch burned Olinda.

The war in the northeast not only caused many Portuguese colonists to flee to Rio, but also caused the Portuguese residents to worry about the arrival of Dutch warships.

Therefore, the local Portuguese also showed extreme indifference and vigilance towards the Ming ships with the concession issued by the King of Spain. After replenishing fresh water and food, Zheng He and Flying Tiger immediately chose to continue south.

Because the war waged by the Dutch on the northeast coast of Brazil greatly reduced the number of pirate ships in South America. On the way south from Rio, Zheng He and the Flying Tiger were only followed by unknown ships twice, and after they showed the Ming flag and the cannons on board, the unknown ships turned around and left.

The further south the boat went, the stronger the wind and waves, and the more frequent the bad weather. However, Galileo's spirit began to improve, and the farther away he was from Europe, the clearer his scholarly consciousness became, and he often made requests to go ashore to investigate.

Although Zheng Zhihu was a little unhappy, Xu Gao always sided with Galileo, and asked the European scholar to take a group of students ashore to investigate and collect various samples. As a result, it took them more than 30 days to reach the Spanish stronghold at the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan.

If there is anything memorable about Zheng Zhihu during this voyage, it is the endless mouth of the Río de la Plata and the endless savannahs nearby. There are no people on such a beautiful grassland and coast, which makes Zheng Zhihu, who is used to seeing crowds in Fujian, a little incredible. If this grassland is turned into arable land, he doesn't know how many people can be fed, this is the first thought he had when he saw the Pampas.

After arriving at the eastern entrance of the Strait of Magellan, although they had the king's concession, the head of the Spanish stronghold here repeatedly made things difficult for them, and finally forced them to pay a bribe before agreeing to send someone to guide them through the Strait of Magellan, which was more than 350 nautical miles long.

After stepping out of the west entrance of the Strait of Magellan, Zheng Zhihu finally realized why these Europeans were so keen to find new routes, because the old routes were full of these road ragepers who wanted to get something for nothing.