The 260th arrives at the Golden Land (Part II)

To say that there is the most gold in the world, the first is the large gold belt in the south of Xuanzhou, followed by the western gold belt in North Chizhou, and the third is the gold belt in Nanzhou.

According to the data of the old time and space brought by the people, the gold reserves of the whole California are as high as 10,000 tons, which is equivalent to half of the total public and private holdings in the world (the gold mines in various places have not been fully disclosed, and there have been several gold rushes like the old time and space, and there is no strong mining scale and huge demand after the industrial revolution, so most of the gold has been transferred from India to China, the world's vault, After the local gold mines were occupied by the crossing circle, the production surged, and this is how it only increased by 20% at the lower pre-crossing starting point, which is equivalent to a total of 20,000 tons, which is much lower than the total of 160,000 tons through the old time and space, but because there is no economic scale of 10 million times that of the old time and space, the gold reserves and annual production at this time are still enough to maintain the compound standard).

This great temptation was unleashed in the state media after the instructions in the wireless telegraph sent back home through the crowd were released in the major state media. While the traversers were still waiting for the ship to be repaired in the Dragonlizard Islands (Coron Islands), there was a wave of public opinion within the empire. All the returnees who had been to Chizhou were surrounded by relatives and friends to ask about what they had seen in Chizhou, but they were restricted by the ban. They saw only a limited amount of money, and they didn't see the legendary gold mines and kingdoms at all. A few dishonest people did not dare to expose their behavior of going inland in violation of the ban. Public opinion reached a climax when the media and museums were instructed to expose the exotic gold objects and samples of Mayan motifs.

The Senate convened urgently. Explore the timeline for the lifting of the land ban. In fact, in the instructions of the traversal, it is just a procedure and a scene. Some of the Mayan items were high-level replicas of the photographs of artifacts brought from time and space, and some were contraband found among the entrained items of the returnees. Naturally, it is impossible for the masses to distinguish between real and fake items, and the gold products dazzle the eyes of visitors as soon as they appear. The Senate took the opportunity to lift the ban, but it also quickly enacted stricter customs regimes and laws for inspection and quarantine. All cargo carrying dangerous goods and pathogens is prohibited from boarding ships to Chizhou, and passengers such as seafarers and immigrants entering and leaving must be quarantined and inspected for at least one month to prevent the invasion and export of harmful pathogens and dangerous species. Each incoming vessel is also cleaned and disinfected at the designated transit port. It is necessary to confirm and identify the goods again and again before they are registered. When all the preparations were in place, the people gathered by the news of the gold mine anxiously waited in Edo, the only designated port of navigation, for Emperor Li Hao's announcement of the termination of the land ban (the beginning and repeal of the decree had to be announced by the emperor himself, which was one of the few works of the emperor in terms of human stamps).

More than 130 boats carrying more than 9,000 gold prospectors and migrant families docked at the Edo wharf and prepared to set sail. Many local residents of the Japanese archipelago also joined the ranks of this gold rush brigade. Thanks to the mining of 'gold mines' on Sado Island and other parts of Japan, Higashi-Yingsu and Nishi-Yingzhou, which are major gold-producing provinces, have always had very purchasing power. However, it has always been the main exporting province of immigrants, just like Fujian. East and West Yingzhou has a large number of skilled miners and a wealthy labor force. At least one-fifth of the first gold prospectors were locals.

When Li Hao's heavenly voice sounded from the radio, all the personnel who were anxiously waiting for the change of decree raised their spirits. Even the Hei family, who got the inside news earlier, was also nervous, and whether the Hei family could go out in the corner of the empire in Xiyingzhou depended on this opportunity.

After more than 20 days, the fleet that arrived at the Lujia Islands (Vancouver Island, discovered and named by Lu Anguo's father) on the east coast of the Pacific Ocean experienced the richness of Chizhou for the first time. The first stop was impressive, with the cramped dock barely able to accommodate ten ships after an emergency expansion by the hundreds of people who lived there. The dock, which was originally used to dock only two or three expedition ships, naturally could not accommodate a huge fleet of more than a hundred ships. Representatives from each ship set foot on the land of Chizhou and got a close-up look at the extraordinariness of this humble pier. The wood used for piling turned out to be a whole thick solid pine, and these logs were not processed into boards and furniture in China, and they could not be found in public places. Looking at the terrible axe marks and jagged stubble on the wooden stakes, several immigrants who had been carpenters for many years began to curse in a low voice the murderous talents of those tyrannical creatures.

However, when the delegates entered the simple temporary showroom for goods and souvenir samples, they all gave up all language and focused their eyes on a pool of gold particles of various sizes on the table in the center of the showroom.

"Welcome to Chizhou, welcome to the land of gold! The bank is free from deception, and guarantees that all raw ore and dog's head gold will be exchanged at a parity without restrictions, and that you and your fellow villagers will not suffer. The head snake of the Lujia Islands, who is part-time the head of the office of Chenji Bank, publicized the sales process after the gold rush to the people who came from afar.

Some people eagerly asked whether the area where the gold mines were located could be bought and mined, and whether all the ownerless wasteland here was occupied according to the same principle as other colonies (whoever completed the surveying and mapping first and registered the purchase with the government agency would be in possession, of course, the vast majority of the surveying and mapping registration was done by the wealthy Chenji Group in front of others, so the world's largest landlord is undoubtedly the one who crossed the crowd and others).

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Of course, those who stayed in Chizhou had also received radio instructions from the mainland dozens of days earlier, and had already begun to contact the Indian tribes in the interior, and some supply points in the rainforest area even directly killed the Mayan city-states to start trade.

The various tribes and city-states in the midst of famine soon fell to the cured fish and large quantities of cured meat that the explorers traded. The thirst for salt led to the fact that the salt god was second only to the main god of gold, and the various tribes of the rainforest soon established very good relations with the Chinese who carried knives and guns in their left hand and goods in their right hand. The Chinese wanted to get their hands on gold, silver, jade, spices, dyes, precious wood, handicrafts, furs, and other trade goods. The Mayans were also preparing and looting hard.

Some of the small tribes in the southern rainforests on the Pacific side of the country that first came into contact with the Chinese soon set off a surge of expansion because they exchanged large quantities of production tools and swords from Chinese merchants in the coastal supply points. In order to obtain more steel products (cutting axes, nails, saw blades, iron pot kitchen utensils, etc.), cold weapons, corn, pickled fish and other grains and salt from the supply ports, it is natural to have more territory and manpower and material resources to collect these trade goods, and the war is inevitably provoked by greed.

Lu Anguo, as the highest-ranking official of the empire in Chizhou, naturally could not watch the development of things get out of control, and ordered the warehouses of various countries' supply ports to stop selling grain and other materials, and it was the responsibility of the government and the people to reserve supplies for the next wave of immigration and gold rush, and now the empire and Maya have not yet established diplomatic relations. Anyone who sells Imperial goods in large quantities is an enemy and will be punished for treason. This ruthless hand naturally stopped the unhealthy trend. Those profiteers who wanted to get rich naturally did not dare to take such a big risk to engage in smuggling, so they had to honestly enclose land and buy land to prosper. A steady stream of gold prospectors and immigrant families also provided a large number of labor and consumption power for the development of the Chizhou coast, and those who had no money contributed to construction and farming, and the rich who dug up gold mines naturally bought and consumed a large amount of land. In addition to exchanging a large number of banknotes for gold and silver. It has also provided a large number of immigrant families with various preferential credit loans and real estate mortgages. It has strengthened the local purchasing power. Seeing that there is a lot of demand and purchasing power in these places, local merchants have also traveled thousands of miles to transport locally needed building materials such as cement, glass, and steel bars, as well as various consumer goods and tools that are not yet capable of being produced locally.

The importance of the Maya suddenly dropped from a hot spot to an insignificant role, and in order to obtain more trade quotas, they had to unite according to the Empire's proposals, form a real confederation, elect a king, and sign a diplomatic and trade treaty with the Empire. The currency of the Mayans was not gold or silver, but cocoa beans. For example, a rabbit is worth 10 cocoa beans, and a slave is worth about 100 cocoa beans. But actually. The cacao beans of the Mayans were not something that could be directly compared to currency. It will most likely just be a unit of exchange that is easy to count. Despite this, it is true that cocoa beans were used as currency by the Mayans. The Mayans used cocoa beans as currency for buying and selling. But there are also people who counterfeit cocoa bean currency. Some merchants skillfully peel off the skin of the cocoa beans. Then stuff in the stirred soil or flour, and then mix the fake beans into the good beans. Because of the counterfeit money, the shrewd Mayans always pinched each cocoa bean paid by the other party with their fingers to see if it was hard, just as later people used their teeth to bite the silver ocean to distinguish the authenticity. According to historical records, it was not uncommon for people to be convicted of counterfeiting currency in the Mayan market. Due to the backwardness of the Maya, the currency directly transitioned from cocoa beans to the same credit currency as the Xuanzhou mainland, and the cocoa cocoa This ratio is naturally experiential, you must know that 200 cocoa beans can be exchanged for a jaguar fur, this ratio is equivalent to 100 pieces of fur can be exchanged for one yuan of dragon yuan, and one yuan can only be exchanged for 20 catties of rice in the mainland. And 100 pieces of fur can be exchanged for 20,000 yuan in the local area.

This ratio is based on the production of 120 kilograms of commercial cocoa plantations per acre in the old time and space of the people, and 20,000 cocoa beans are only 20 kilograms of chocolate raw materials. This figure is equivalent to the annual output of 5 acres of cocoa fields in this time and space, which means that once this exchange is rolled out, the purchasing power of most of the Mayan cash will shrink by 99%, and the vast majority of Mayan merchants and aristocrats who have just entered the threshold of the market economy will go bankrupt. However, it is obviously impossible for this to happen, in order to stabilize the transition and ease the contradictions, the new Mayan king adopted a dual-track price system and a highly controlled foreign exchange policy, although the exchange rate of 1:20,000 is still there, and there are still very few who can exchange cocoa beans for dragon dollars. In order to obtain more grain and industrial goods from the empire, the Mayans naturally had to export large quantities in exchange for foreign exchange. Ore and timber became commodities, and the desire to grow cocoa beans was extinguished at once, and at this exchange rate, the export of cocoa beans was completely at a loss, and it was not as cost-effective as reducing the cost of importing a little corn from a variety of points. When the merchants of the empire saw the value and benefits of cocoa, the price of cocoa beans naturally increased. After all, in the plan of the Crossing Crowd, this system was only a brief transition period to help the Maya transition to the gold standard.

Committed to creating an internal market, the public has never been, and the foreign market is more important than domestic demand. The real El Dorado is more reliable than the market within its own borders. Two or three years later, many ports along the coast of Chizhou have developed into the standard three-level land of the Xuanzhou coast, in addition to timber, fishery resources, and various places have developed a path suitable for regional characteristics, the mineral-rich Changjian Peninsula and the surrounding areas have developed many towns and cities for mining and metal processing industries, and the coastal ports of Lujia Islands and other high-latitude coastal ports have also developed fur farming and trade, and many coastal ports in the tropics have developed textile industry and tropical sugar industry in addition to maintaining the status of trade transit ports with the Maya. These barren coastal plains soon became a true El Dorado full of business opportunities. The fifteenth wave of Chizhou immigrants saw the hollowed-out gold mountain, the huge gold mine was dug into a huge pit, and the gold coins minted from the extraction of nearly 30 tons of gold were quietly lying in the reserve vault of the Chenji Bank, and people could pay to visit the increasing gold in these underground vaults every month. This is just the beginning of the El Dorado route that newcomers must walk through, followed by a labor job market and model housing communities plastered with advertisements for high-paying jobs, and with the completion of the construction of Kinmen Port, it became the first major port in Chishu corresponding to Edo to welcome immigrants and gold prospectors, and model farms and metallurgical factories on the outskirts of the city are also a must-see on the El Dorado route.

Whenever the skeptical newcomers complete the El Dorado tourist route, they will naturally put aside their doubts and devote themselves to the tide of Chizhou construction with enthusiasm. (To be continued......)