The child's mournful cries rang out outside, and several men who were tending to the catch by the shack turned their heads to look, laughed, turned their heads, and went about their work.

It's autumn in Tierra del Fuego, and the climate hasn't turned cold yet, so everyone must take advantage of this time to save up for more food. When the first snow falls in winter, they will pack their bags, live in a logging hut in the mountains, and start working for the lumberyard franchised by the Southern Railway Company to earn some cash income; Some people choose to go to the beach to hunt some seals, sea otters and other animals to obtain high-quality fur and oil. Of course, they are all licensed hunters issued by the Southern Railway Company, and the number of seals they can kill is also strictly limited, and coupled with the high taxes, their income is only a fraction higher than that of logging.

The kid who was being laughed at by everyone was now fighting with a huge male goose that stretched its neck and unrelentingly pinched the child's open crotch pants with its beak - well, little cock. The boy fought with the male goose for a while, and finally gave up, and then ran away with the little cock in his hands.

This is the Beech Fort, the first stronghold of the people on the eastern shore on Tierra del Fuego, and the only stronghold at present. After a wave of new arrivals from the mainland at the beginning of the year, the settlement's population has rapidly climbed to more than 500 people, making it arguably the most densely populated area on Tierra del Fuego.

On this large, cold island, there are only two seasons for those who settle here: summer and winter. In the summer, they desperately store food - mainly fish and shrimp, vicuña meat and a small amount of potatoes - and in the winter they go to nearby forest farms to cut trees or hunt seals to earn some cash for themselves. It is used to buy some daily necessities.

The more than 200 new residents of the year are all from the Amur River basin in the Old World. Most of them are Daurs. A small number are Oroqen and Buryats. They have lived in high latitudes for generations and have long adapted to living in cold regions. Therefore, the relocation of these people to the southern Patagonia region is undoubtedly the right move.

In addition to these new guests from the Amur River, on the south bank of the Hungnam River, across the strait, more than 300 special guests are also carrying iron pickaxes and digging in the gravel-covered land. They were all released from prison after working in the Heishui Coal Mine for several years, and they were born as Manchu prisoners after they were freed. They were pulled to Southern Patagonia by migrant boats on the east coast, and returned to the terrifying Mo Dashuai to beg for a living.

Years of coal mining have trained them in good obedience and discipline, plus they also have a little military skills, are not afraid of the natives' attacks, and can adapt to the cold climate, so the local people asked them to come over and use them as labor to develop cold regions, and now it really comes in handy. The place where these former Manchu captives lived in the small village of Guel-Aike on the later Argentine railway line is now called Zixintun - a meaning for reform.

Residents of Zixintun spend their days leveling the foundations for the construction of roads, while also cultivating fertile land along the riverbank. And that's not all. According to the regulations of the Southern Railway Company, each of them had to take on the task of being a postman twice, which was a kind of forced labor. Mail delivery starts and ends at the point of delivery from Xintun to the free city of Araukan. One is a light mail, often something like a letter, a work report, or a blueprint; The other time is heavy mail, usually ore samples, soil samples, animal and plant specimens, etc.

Fortunately, the Southern Railway Company did not "do bad things". While undertaking so much heavy work, they also enjoyed a little benefit, that is, the Southern Railway Company allocated them ten acres of farmland per person along the riverbank, and also brought them a group of Italian girls, which helped them start a family. This made these former Eight Banner disciples suddenly extinguish their thoughts of running away, and honestly stayed in the tunzi to work. In fact, they can't escape, flee to the desert steppe to eat sand? People aren't that stupid!

After the executive committee packaged the timber and fishery resources of southern Patagonia into the Southern Railway Company, Mo Ming became very interested in developing this place, because it seems to be the place where the benefits can be seen the fastest. For example, the coast near the beech fort is extremely rich in seafood, although the westerly wind howls all year round, as can be seen in the large number of Magellanic penguins that crowd the seashore all day long - they are the best proof of the abundance of fish.

In addition to Magellanic penguins, there are also a large number of seals, sea otters and other aquatic animals that live near Tierra del Fuego. These animals are a treasure trove of movement for the Southern Railway Company, providing both high-quality fur and high-grade fat, and finally their meat is edible.

After the Southern Railway Company moved more than 200 Shandan people to beech forts and licensed some of them who had hunted seals on Sakhalin Island (half of Sakhalin was extremely rich in seals), leather tanning and lubricant refining became one of the most important side jobs for the local population, which was also the construction of town ports and logging.

Due to the special climate here, wheat, rice and other grains are not ripe at all, so the local residents can plant only potatoes and sweet potatoes in the short-growing period when sowing in spring every year, and the grains are only barley, but the yield per mu is not low, which shows that the soil nutrients are relatively rich. However, the grass here is very rich and nutritious, and if the grass grown here is used to feed livestock, it will quickly recover the weight lost after a long winter.

The small number of garden vegetables cultivated by the residents is also so-so, and the growth is not good, but due to the climate, the seeds of some vegetables may not be ripe, which requires them to order new seeds from the native northern botanical garden every year. However, since vegetables are mainly supplied to ships, the commercialization process is relatively high, so the profit during this period is quite good.

Obviously, the lives of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are very busy, hard, and very unstable. In the event of a failed harvest, they are still able to survive the famine with potatoes or sweet potatoes, but their quality of life has deteriorated significantly. However, the creative power of the masses is always limitless, and the Shandan people, who settled here from the Amur River Valley, soon set their sights on the island's huge herd of wild vicuñas. They judged from experience that in the spring and summer, these animals should migrate within a certain range, and at this time, it is a good opportunity to hunt them.

Vicuña meat is also an important food source for the residents. Half of the harvest in the spring is eaten on the spot or sold to passing ships, the summer catch is salted and brought to the mountain lumberyards by men for winter to eat, and the leather can be tanned and sold to the homeland to subsidize the family.

A small number of indigenous people such as Ona people on Tierra del Fuego simply admired the newcomers of Shandan so much, although everyone's living environment is not much different, but in terms of life skills, it is simply not a world. Therefore, with the help of the Taoist clergy on the east bank, these scarce natives soon arrived from all over the world and settled around the beech fort, which was compiled by the Southern Railway Company and officially incorporated into the ruling order of the east bank.

These natives are not useless, and they have also brought some good news to the new residents of Shandan. For example, which beaches are littered with whales every year, which areas are rich in birds to hunt, and which areas are infested with valuable foxes. They also brought with them key vicuña domestication techniques, giving the women and children of the settlements more things to do. The Shandan people have also taught them their unique reindeer breeding techniques, and there are currently more than a dozen extremely valuable reindeer and local dogs brought from the Far East in the beech fort - all of which are good friends of the Shandan people.

As things stand, reindeer and moose from the Far East (stocked on uninhabited islands) are well adapted to the climate of Southern Patagonia, and with the lack of a threat from large predators, lush vegetation and abundant food sources, it is believed that their populations will soon expand. The same is true of the hard-fought bison brought from North America, which are currently herded on a series of broken uninhabited islands west of Tierra del Fuego, where East Coast Department of Agriculture staff visit once a year to investigate the animals' conditions. In the last less than two years, several bison should still be alive, at least the staff have traveled all over the island and have not seen their carcasses in the wild.

In addition to reindeer breeding, they can travel between mountain forest farms and settlements on sleds every winter when heavy snow falls and road traffic is cut off, instead of having to stay in the mountains to cut down trees in the winter. The same is true for dogs, the Shandan people brought their own hunting dogs and sled dogs from the Amur River and Sakhalin, and the Ministry of Agriculture of the East Coast plans to build a livestock breeding station here in the future to breed a new breed of dogs suitable for the climate of Southern Patagonia, which will help the people of the East Coast to develop the island.

According to the plan of the Southern Railway Company, they will invest 25,000 yuan in three batches in the beech fort under the condition of financial constraints, and build a local material warehouse (to store muskets and ammunition, fishing nets, flour and other daily necessities), a small steam refinery (to extract high-grade lubricants from seal fat), and a small leather goods processing factory. After these enterprises are up and running and making profits, the Southern Railway Company will continue to make additional investments, such as wood processing plants (including two workshops for wood drying and wood products processing), brick kiln factories, etc., and may also build small textile enterprises (using wool and vicuña hair in Southern Patagonia as raw materials), in short, to develop local resources as much as possible to supplement the finances of the Southern Railway Company. (To be continued......)