"Don't mess me off, I'm not stupid. This gun belongs to me, even if it compensates my horse! And bullets, give them all! Swan wiped a handful of tears, wiped his snot from his sleeve, got up from the ground, and began to ponder the gun in his hand. He likes both guns and horses, and if he had to choose one or the other, he would choose the former.

"You're not afraid that he'll actually shoot!" Swan ran to the target with the bullet, and Qi Zu wiped the cold sweat on his head and came to Hong Tao's side.

"The bullet I loaded had no primer...... If he really shoots at me, he is the one lying on the ground now, even if he dares to raise the muzzle of his gun to me. Hong Tao stretched out his left hand from his sleeve, holding a small silver pistol in his hand, not much bigger than a slap, which Qi Zu made as a gift to Tu when he was idle, it can hold four small bullets, it can't shoot far, but it can still kill people at close range.

"Alas...... I'm scared to death, why do you have to test him like this, don't you worry? Qi Zu's cold sweat not only didn't wipe it off, but it also came out more. The old emperor in front of him is sometimes naïve and kind, sometimes insidious and ruthless. After so many years, I haven't figured out what kind of person he is.

"As soon as this gun comes out, it will be a big killer to the enemy and to ourselves, and the necessary tests must be had, otherwise I will probably be killed by someone one day. It's not always possible to know exactly what he's thinking, but I can't sleep without trying. Hong Tao put the small pistol back in his pocket, looked at Swan, who was reloading, and shook his head helplessly. He doesn't have Cao Cao's skills and vision, so he can only use some stupid methods to deceive himself into peace of mind.

The new gun that Hong Tao and Qi Zu came up with was the famous revolver, commonly known as the revolver. It was very low-tech, and with copper-shelled bullets, improvisable spring steel, and the right ideas, a blacksmith could make it, even easier than a flintlock pistol. Qi Zu only took more than three days from beginning to end after reading the drawings to making the finished product, and the remaining more than a day was spent studying the charge of this small-caliber bullet.

The firing range of this revolver is only forty or fifty meters, and this is the result of lengthening the barrel. A smaller revolver like Hong Tao's hand has an effective killing distance of about ten meters, and it is not needed in a war, so it is a small toy for self-defense, slightly longer than a dagger.

Hong Tao intends to use the revolver as a secondary weapon for the double-barreled shotgun, and once he enters an environment that is too complicated, such as urban street fighting, the long gun may not be as good as the short gun. Moreover, the revolver has two biggest advantages over the double-barreled shotgun, that is, it can fire five bullets in a row, even if one or two bullets are dumb fire, it will not delay the normal firing of the subsequent bullets. Except for a few more pulls on the trigger, there is no need for extra reloads.

With these two new weapons, Hong Tao felt that it would be no more difficult to attack the city of the Trotskys, whether it was on a plateau or not, and whether it had walls and terrain advantages. You don't even need to carry artillery, it's too heavy, it's okay to put it on flat ground and drag it with horses, once you enter the mountains, you just rely on people's shoulders to carry it, which greatly affects the mobility of the troops.

Originally, Hong Tao also wanted to get another lighter artillery gun, which was a mortar. With the silver nitrate primer, there was a mortar firing device, and many mortars in later generations used shotguns as a firing device. The solution is very simple, that is, remove the steel balls from the shotgun, load the appropriate amount of fire/projection, and then screw it into a small hole in the tail of the mortar shell. When the shell falls down the chamber to the bottom, the primer of the shotgun hits the firing pin at the bottom of the chamber, and relying on the force of the shotgun, the shell flies out. As for how far it can fly and how much bore pressure the barrel can withstand, it all depends on slow experimentation, and there is no technical difficulty.

However, after talking to Qi Zu, Hong Tao temporarily canceled the plan.

First of all, the large-diameter steel pipe can't be made yet, and the diameter is too small and has no practical significance. In addition, there are technical difficulties in the structure of the shells, whether they are filled with black powder or other explosives? This requires a lot of experimentation to verify. Finally, how to get the tail of the shell, there are no suitable materials and accurate molds, and it has to be redeveloped, which requires a lot of manpower and time.

If the development of mortars were to begin immediately, the smelter, mechanical, and chemical workshops would all have to do one thing, and they would not be able to produce enough shotguns, revolvers and ammunition in a few months. After weighing the pros and cons, Hong Tao had to put off the mortar research and development plan for a while, and wait until there was time to talk about it later.

Within a few days of Hong Tao's arrival in Sun City, the whole city was busy. The bazaar, which was originally open to the public, was temporarily withdrawn, and more people were transferred to smelters, machine factories, and shipyards to help. Many women were incorporated into the new workshops built on the east side of the city, where the strange rule was that all women who came to work had to take off their clothes for examination, and then change into short linen clothes and wear cloth gloves to work in the house.

The workshop was a bullet filling factory, with more than a dozen stone houses hundreds of meters apart, each with only four Indian women working. Their task was to put an earthy yellow paste into a copper bowl the size of a grain of rice in a small copper spoon. Then they were sent to another room, where they pressed the small copper bowl into a small hole in the back of the copper shell with a wooden mold, and sealed it with gum on the gaps.

After the primer shells are made, they are sent to the other two rooms in batches, loaded with collodion particles, felt pads and small lead balls, and then sealed with cork, and the front end of the copper shell is squeezed inward with a wooden depressor, and the cork is fixed. Finally, it was sealed with paraffin wax, and a bullet was done.

This is the safest bullet production process that Bush came up with, separating all the processes, and the number of workers and raw materials in each house is very small, even if an accident occurs, it will not have much power, let alone affect other houses.

Although it was a little troublesome to send it around, Hong Tao thought it was necessary. The production can be increased by the number of people, it is best not to have an accident, slow down and not afraid, now there is no need for a large number of ammunition. The troops also carry reloading materials and improvised small machines that can be reloaded after the battle. This kind of shotgun is easy to make, and there is no danger, the only problem is that everyone makes it differently, and there may be duds.

In addition to going to the horse farm every day to practice riding, Hong Tao also went into the chemical laboratory with Bush and more than a dozen Indian apprentices to constantly purify sulfur, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, ether, and alcohol with rudimentary equipment. Some of these things are used to make ammunition, and some are used as medicines.

Hearing that her husband was going to attack the town of the Trotto, Tu also took some of his people into action, coated the whale meat with fine salt and spices, and then dried it in an oven to make salted jerky. The corn was then ground into flour and mixed with sugar and starch to make yellow corn crackers, which were military rations and were very popular with Indian soldiers. It's a pity that Hong Tao wanted to vomit when he saw these two things, and he had to endure not vomiting, pretending to love food.

Mexico's topography and climate are diverse, with the plains in the east near the Gulf of Mexico having a standard tropical climate and the rainy season around April to October. During this season, it often rains heavily and darkly, when the river swells and is muddy everywhere, and many roads that could have been walked are no longer possible at this time. After October, the dry season begins, when there is little rain, and the sun hangs in the sky every day, which is a more suitable time for long trekking in the plains.

But this is only the climate of the eastern coastal areas, and in the central plateau areas, there is not so much rain, and the temperature difference between day and night is very large. At noon, it can be sunburned, and as soon as the sun sets, it will be cold and windy, and some mountainous areas will snow. So Mexicans have a traditional attire, which is to wear a huge straw hat on their heads, and you can immediately tell that they are Mexicans when you look at this image.

In fact, there is another more unique thing on their bodies that everyone has not noticed, that is, they are draped in a thick cotton blanket, or simply cut a hole in the middle of the blanket and put it on their body as clothes.

This kind of dress does not need to be carefully pondered, and it illustrates two climatic problems. The big straw hat is used to prevent sun exposure, especially the sun on the plateau, the ultraviolet rays are very strong, it is easy to burn the skin, not only to wear a straw hat, but also to be big enough to cover the whole body. The cotton blanket is used to keep out the cold, without this blanket, people can freeze to death in the wild at night.

Hong Tao can't do anything about this kind of climatic conditions, he is not a true god and can't change the climate. The only thing that can be done is to follow the customs, people wear big straw hats on the plateau, so we also wear them; People are covered with blankets, and even have clothes and covers, let's have one by one, the quality is better than theirs, they are all woven with the looms of the Li people, and they are all made of European wool, which is softer and warmer.

From the coastal plains at very low altitudes to the plateaus at an altitude of more than one or two thousand meters, there is another problem that needs to be considered, and that is altitude sickness. Although there will be no obvious altitude sickness in a place more than 2,000 meters high, it is inevitable that it will be easy to get tired and lose its resistance, which is a natural reaction of the human body and no one can avoid it. However, this natural reaction can be overcome by lung capacity, and the easiest way to increase lung capacity is to recommend diving.

Hong Tao was the master on this issue, and together with Swan, all the personnel who participated in the plateau operations, including several missionaries, had to go to the estuary by boat every day for diving training, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Whether it works or not, Hong Tao doesn't know, anyway, the big crabs and sea urchins he likes to eat are not missing.

(To be continued.) )