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 travelers, 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 pannings 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 in the world's vaults, The production of the local gold mines has increased dramatically after being occupied by the Crossing Circle, which is only a 20% increase in the lower level before the crossing and can reach a total of 20,000 tons, which is much lower than the total of 160,000 tons in 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 heated 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 due to the ban, they had limited sight and did not 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 high level when the media and museums were instructed to expose the exotic gold objects and samples of Mayan motifs.

The Senate convened urgently to discuss a timetable 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 must also be cleaned and disinfected at the designated transit port, and the cargo must be repeatedly confirmed and identified before registration. 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 immigrant families docked at the Edo pier and prepared to set sail, and many local residents of the Edo archipelago joined the gold rush team. Thanks to the mining of 'gold mountains' in Sado Island and various parts of the country, Higashieisu and Nishieisu, which are major gold-producing provinces, have always had great purchasing power. Like Fujian, Yingzhou has a large number of skilled miners and a wealthy workforce, and 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 mentioned Jing Shen. 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, and the representatives sent by each ship set foot on the land of Chizhou to observe the extraordinary features of this humble pier up close. The piling wood turned out to be a whole thick solid pine, these logs are not processed into boards and furniture in the country, it is impossible to appear in public places, here can only be used as piling timber for temporary docks, looking at the miserable axe marks and jagged wood stubble on the stakes, several immigrants who have been carpenters for many years began to curse in a low voice those violent killings.

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 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 at the zhèng fu agency would be in possession, of course, most 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 at the feet of the salted fish and large quantities of cured meat used by the explorers to trade, and the salt was comparable to gold in this unusually mineral-deficient rainforest region, and the thirst for salt led to the salt god being the second highest god after the main god, and the various tribes in the rainforest soon established very good relations with the Chinese with knives and guns in their left hand and goods in their right hand. The Mayans were also preparing and looting the gold, silver, jade, spices, dyes, precious wood, handicrafts, furs and other trade goods that the Chinese hoped to obtain.

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 expanded into high cháo because they exchanged large quantities of production tools and swords from Chinese merchants at the supply points along the coast. 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 couldn't 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 Zhan Ng Fu and the people of the country to reserve materials for the next immigrants Cháo and the gold rush, and now that the empire and Maya have not established diplomatic relations, any act of selling imperial materials in large quantities is an enemy and will be punished for treason. This ruthless hand naturally stopped the unhealthy trend, and those Jiān businessmen who wanted to make a fortune naturally did not dare to take such a big risk to engage in smuggling, so they had to honestly enclose land to buy land for reproductive production. 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, Chenji Bank has also handled various preferential credit loans and real estate mortgages for a large number of immigrant families, which has more effectively guaranteed 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 corner, and in order to obtain more trade quotas, they had to unite according to the advice of the empire, 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 in reality, the Mayan cocoa bean was 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 traders skillfully peel off the skin of the cocoa beans, stuff them into the stirred soil or flour, and then mix the fake beans with the good beans. Due to the counterfeit money, the Mayans of Jing Ming always pinched each cocoa bean paid by the other party with their fingers to see if it was hard, just like later people bit the silver ocean with their teeth 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 cocoa cocoa coas jointly issued by Chenji Bank and other banks and other local branches became the trade settlement currency instead of cocoa beans, according to the ratio of 1 dragon yuan to 100 yuan cocoa cocoa cocoa, there is no limit to the exchange of cocoa beans from the Mayans, and the newly formed Mayan cocoa trading company is according to the ratio of 200 cocoa beans to 1 yuan 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 hope of growing cocoa beans was extinguished at once, and at this exchange rate, it was not as cost-effective to grow cocoa beans as a total loss for exports, and it was not as cost-effective as a variety of corn to reduce the cost of imports. 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 developed into the standard third-class land of the Xuanzhou coast, in addition to timber, fishery resources, and the development of a way suitable for regional characteristics, the mineral-rich Changjian Peninsula and the surrounding areas developed many towns and cities for mining and metal processing industries, and high-latitude coastal ports such as the Lujia Islands also developed fur farming and trade, and many coastal ports in the tropics not only continued to maintain the status of trade transit ports with the Maya, but also developed textile industry and tropical sugar industry. 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 lay quietly in the reserve vault of the Chenji Bank, and every month it was opened, people could spend money to visit the ever-increasing gold in these underground vaults. This is only the route that newcomers must take in the El Dorado route, and there are also labor job markets and model housing communities plastered with advertisements for high-paying jobs, and with the completion of the construction of Kinmen Port, it has become the first major port in Chishu corresponding to Edo to welcome immigrants and gold prospectors, and the model farms and metallurgical factories on the outskirts of the city are also the must-visit places on the route to visit El Dorado.

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