After a preliminary survey of the terrain, members of the Military Police generally agreed that it would be best to pray that no hostile forces would launch a large-scale attack on the area from the sea in the future, and that would make the coastal terrain a nightmare for the defending side. (.) In view of the fact that the Crossing Group is certainly unlikely to send heavy troops overseas for the foreseeable period in the future, it is necessary to carefully consider the attitude of the Crossing Group towards the current Annam regime.

Of course, the expedition team will not just look at this place and make a conclusion, in fact, Hongji's mining area is very large, and there are far more places where freight terminals can be built, and many specific geographical environments are difficult to see the advantages and disadvantages only from the map, and you must personally investigate the field to get the most intuitive feeling.

That night, when the expedition team got in touch with the base camp through the Guò radio station, they learned the good news that the first trial steam engine had been installed in the Tiandu Iron Mine and put into trial operation. Due to the limitations of the processing technology, the thermal conversion efficiency and stable working time of this steam engine are still at a relatively low level, but the investment of mechanical power undoubtedly means that the production efficiency of the group will reach a new level.

While this news made the expedition members rejoice, it also brought a lot of pressure. The use of the steam engine means that the demand for fuel will increase rapidly, and whether there is a stable coal import channel is likely to become a bottleneck restricting the development speed of the group. From this point of view, the success or failure of the expedition will directly affect the future development route of the group.

Early the next morning, the refreshed expedition team left the anchorage of the previous night and slowly moved west along the coastline. Because the information of each mining site is relatively detailed, the task of the mining exploration team is relatively simple, and when the time comes, it is enough to go directly ashore to collect ore samples from the places marked on the map. The real difficulty of this expedition was to find a port location that satisfied all parties, and although there were later generations of information as a reference, the Executive Committee still had to combine the conclusions of the field trip to make the final choice.

The main task of the expedition today was to find the next suitable port for development, and the selection of this site took into account the depth of the local coastal water, the water environment, the distance from the mining site, the difficulty of land transportation, etc., and of course, the difficulty of military defense, which the Military Police Department attaches great importance to.

The location of this mining area is actually a huge peninsula jutting out into the sea, and opposite it is another peninsula, the tips of which are less than a kilometer apart, and the fan-shaped bay formed by the two peninsulas is the focus of today's investigation. （.）

The fan-shaped bay is actually an estuary to the sea owned by several rivers, so the coast is almost entirely a large tidal flat, and the expedition team tried to go around the inland side of the peninsula, which contains coal mines, to see if there was a suitable site for trimming a large cargo wharf along the coast.

After arriving at the other side of the peninsula, the expedition team docked and sent team members to survey and sample the land conditions here. To the delight of the mineral exploration team, there is no sign of man-made mining at the site, which means that the possibility of hostile forces coveting it is greatly reduced. But at the same time, they also discovered the frustrating reality that the place was completely deserted, and if the Executive Committee wanted to mine the coal mines on a large scale, how to bring in local immigrants would still be a difficult problem to deal with.

Along the way, there were several sites that seemed suitable for the construction of the wharf, but they were successively rejected by the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Military Police. The reason of the Ministry of Shipping is that these places are either too far away from the planned mining point, which will cause great trouble to logistics and transportation in the future, or the area within the estuary of the river, the water depth and water width are very limited, which is not suitable for the cargo terminal where a large number of heavy cargo ships will frequently enter and exit in the future.

On the one hand, it is necessary to have a "long-term vision" when inspecting the site of the wharf, which must fully take into account the scale of cargo transportation in five or even ten years, and on the other hand, it seems to be eager for quick success, requiring the future wharf address to be "as close as possible to the mining point", so as to reduce the amount of work required to open up the land transportation channel in the early stage. It's no wonder that several alternative locations along the route were shot dead by the Department of Shipping.

The reasons given by the Military Police Department are similar to those vetoed the day before, and the places inspected today are basically the terrain of the coastal plains, and the fact that there is no danger to defend alone is enough for the Military Police Department to veto these places. According to the opinion of the Military Police Department, these places today are not even as good as the anchorage where they spent the night yesterday, at least there are still a few commanding heights in that place at the port outlet that can be used for fortifications. And in the event of a war in the coastal plains inspected today, there is no way to defend them, so should the miners dig trenches along the coastline?

The commissioner of the Ministry of Agriculture was very pleased with these places, and in his opinion these alluvial plains near the estuaries of rivers were fertile and suitable for the cultivation of food crops on large scales. However, this view was quickly refuted by others: the Red River Delta, one of Vietnam's largest grain-producing regions, is just a few dozen nautical miles to the west, and the conditions and scale of grain cultivation there are quite astonishing both in this era and in the next few hundred years. In such a place, there is basically no need to consider the problem of food shortage. Moreover, this is an overseas base, manpower is always a problem, and the executive committee is afraid that everyone here can become miners, how can they allocate manpower to engage in agricultural development.

Seeing that it was already afternoon, the members of the expedition team were not interested because they had not been able to find a suitable target. Seeing this, Wang Tom simply ordered to stop today's expedition and organize the members to conduct a wild hunt before dark.

The members who heard the news immediately cheered, and some even shouted the slogan "King Wise". After all, most of the members are young people in their twenties and thirties, so they are naturally very interested in such activities as hunting. However, due to the conditions in the country before traveling, there are not many people who have actually experienced hunting, so it is not a simple matter to organize a wild hunt temporarily.

Tom Wang asked the elder Morgan and the bearded Johnson to stay behind to guard the ship, although the two of them had experience in hunting, their Chinese language skills were limited, and they were afraid that they were not good enough to serve as instructors. Then the remaining fifteen people were divided into three groups, led by several experienced people.

As for the weapons used for hunting, Tom Wang was not bold enough to let a group of rookies shoot directly with their guns, he took out two compound bows and an MP9 military crossbow from the cabin of the "Speedy" and assigned them to three squads. These items are all his personal collections, and this is the first time that they have been taken out and displayed after the crossing.

There are also people who know the goods among the members, and Xie Chun, who has mixed knowledge, took the bow and shouted: "Hoyt's carbon spider! This is a rare good thing in China." Then he grabbed another bow and said in a serk voice: "Matthews chill-r, local tyrant, please be friends with me!"

Tom Wang smiled and said, "You also like to play with bows and arrows?"

Xie Chun shook his head and said, "I don't like it, but I just know a little bit about it." I've played in an archery gym before, but this is the first time I've hunted in the wild. ”

Wang Tom said: "Then you try it, these two are 70-pound bows." ”

Xie Chun was stunned and said: "There will be no 70-pound bow in the archery hall, I remember that more than 60 pounds will be banned from the competition, and I have only played with a 50-pound bow before." ”

Roger next to him interjected: "We've always played with 70-pound bows. Be careful, you don't get to your waist. ”

Xie Chun was naturally unconvinced when he heard this, put on the finger guard handed over by Wang Tom, took a deep breath, and pulled hard, but he couldn't pull it away the first time, and he exerted his strength again, but Xie Chun's face was already red, and it seemed that it was almost to the limit.

Roger shook his head and said, "You better go play with the crossbow, a 70-pound bow is not suitable for you, even if you can pull it away, you can't shoot a few times, so it will be difficult for you to hit the target." ”

The MP9 military crossbow that Wang Tom took out is not a good thing, this is a weapon-grade bow and crossbow that is really equipped with special forces. In addition to the optical sight on the crossbow, the thickened steel wire and the eight-wheel component pulley set make this crossbow much more powerful than ordinary hunting crossbows, with an effective range of more than 150 meters.

Three cold weapons were designated as the main weapons for hunting, and Tom Wang didn't want to waste his limited ammunition to make these rookies go hunting. Of course, perhaps the use of cold weapons will make the hunt more fun, after all, this weapon will make the sport of hunting more back-to-basic.

In addition to all the personnel who need to carry walkie-talkies to report their directions at any time, Wang Tom also asked everyone to take off their camouflage jackets and wear only conspicuous white T-shirts on their upper bodies, so as to avoid accidental injuries between members due to blurred vision in the woods. Of course, for the sake of safety, the members of the military police assigned to the three teams were also equipped with four guns, two long and two short, but the gunmen would not shoot unless there was a danger to the lives of the members.