Lake Malawi

The day before Carl Peters, president of the German East Africa Company, arrived in Seoul, Li Fushou and his wife took the "Voyager" cruise ship and embarked on the voyage to Lake Malawi.

Lake Malawi is a typical rift valley lake at the southernmost tip of the Great Rift Valley, with a maximum depth of more than 700 meters, and is surrounded by 14 rivers that inject water all year round, but there is only one outlet, which is the Shire River that extends to the south.

The Shire River flows into the lower Zambezi River after more than 400 kilometres, and it is also the last large tributary of the Zambezi River before it enters the sea.

After the "Voyager" cruise ship went north more than 270 kilometers along the calm river, everyone abandoned the boat and went ashore in Qiqu Town, a new immigrant town, while the "Voyager" cruise ship waited in the same place, and Li Fushou and his entourage changed into horses and continued to go north.

In the 80-kilometre stretch from Matope to Hamilton Falls in the middle reaches of the Shire River, the mountains on both sides are tightly bound, with many waterfalls, canyons and rapids, with a drop of 384 meters, known as the Murchison Falls.

This area is not accessible to ships, but because of the large river drop due to the continuous mountains, it contains abundant water energy resources, which can provide abundant power for the upstream and downstream plain areas, and contains rich coal, iron and aluminum mineral resources, which is suitable for in-depth development.

The coal resources in this area have been explored by experts, and the quality is relatively average, which is enough for ordinary cargo ship thermal coal, domestic coal and power plant coal, but it is not suitable for the high-calorie, high-quality coal required by warships, and the same is true for iron ore, the taste is more general, far less than the high-quality iron ore produced in Australia.

But then again, this iron ore is also enough for the production of pig iron and crude steel, after all, there is no mechanical industry, munitions industry and steamship industry in Mozambique that require high steel performance, and the production of some ordinary construction steel and agricultural steel is fully satisfied.

It is in light of this

Wu Mozhou's planned industrial center is located in Qiqu Town, and plans to invest 85,000 pounds to import German blast furnace equipment to build a new steel plant with an annual output of 30,000 tons here to provide steel for the construction of Mozambique, which does not need to be transported from Longmen City.

The company plans to invest about 53,000 pounds to import a rotary kiln with a size of 2.25×46 meters from Nacker-Chempo, Germany, with an output of 3.45 tons of clinker per hour and 500 barrels of cement per day (170 kilograms per barrel, or 85 tons).

In addition, it is necessary to build a series of small enterprises such as oil mills, tanneries, food processing factories, flour mills, hydropower stations, agricultural tool factories, etc., with investments ranging from two or three thousand pounds to tens of thousands of pounds, to build Qiqu Town into an industrial center in Mozambique, with initial material supply capacity.

All this stems from the superior geographical location of Qiqu Town.

It is backed by the central mountainous area rich in mineral resources of the Shire River, facing the calm and wide lower reaches of the Shire River, and the industrial products produced can be connected to the lower Zambezi River towns through the wide river all the way south through the wide river, and then enter the inland towns along the Zambezi River to the west, and can also go deep into more inland areas along the main stream of the Zambezi River, which has unique convenient transportation conditions.

Except for the rainy season of 3~4 months when the Zambezi River is very watery every year, it can be safely navigated at other times, which is an extremely important geographical advantage.

Planning;

In Qiqu Town alone, the total planned investment (including the construction of towns and wharves) reached 225,000 pounds, which is a strong part of the development of the 24 towns planned.

According to Wu Mozhou's large-scale plan, the investment of one million pounds a year is really not enough, not to mention that the Central Avenue, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, has invested a considerable amount of money, and the progress is rapid.

After completion, the construction of South Avenue and North Avenue will start one after another.

No matter how cheap black slave labor is, it costs money, food and construction tools always have to be bought, army soldiers have to pay some subsidies to supervise construction, they have to pay the salaries of formal engineering personnel, bridges and culverts have to use cement and steel, and there are some necessary expenditures, the construction scale of seventy or eighty thousand black slave laborers will not be less than 28~290,000 pounds a year.

Some of the 24 towns are newly built, some are renovated and extended, and the annual investment can be as little as thousands of pounds, and as many as tens of thousands of pounds a year, this is an investment of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and as the number of immigrants expands, it will be invested every year.

As the ruling center of the entire Mozambique region, the city of Seoul is part of the town's expansion, and the construction of sewerage facilities and asphalt pavement are all planned, which will cost a lot of money.

Otherwise, if it rains and is covered in muddy water, and on dry days, you can't afford to lose that person.

In addition, the main focus is on housing construction and resettlement, which is mainly covered by bank loans, but the first few months of Chinese immigrants arriving in Africa are empty, and in any case, some subsidies are required, and this money also needs to be financed.

There are countless places where money is needed to build a home on the basis of poverty and whiteness.

Early stage of construction

The Red Fort returned 1.4 million pounds worth of war captures in 2~3 years, about 500,000 pounds per year, but after that, there will be a large gap in the finances of Mozambique, and the annual allocation will drop sharply from one million pounds to 500,000 to 600,000 pounds, which is the biggest test.

Li Fushou gave the African governor a five-year time camp, requiring that the financial balance be basically reached by the end of 1891 and the blood transfusion of the base camp should be reduced, which was a very important time node.

At that time, if Mozambique is not able to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency through taxation, Wu Mozhou will basically declare the policy failure and it will be time to replace him.

After leaving Qiqu Town, we entered the mountains.

There are several shepherd's trails along the west side of the vast foothills, after abandoning the boat and landing on the shore, Li Fushou and his entourage of more than 400 people rode horses and mules into the mountains, and after two days of trekking, they suddenly opened up in front of the eyes of the mountainous area of more than 80 kilometers, and came to a boundless plain.

The lake is quiet and the clouds are wide, and the mountains are reflected in the clear water, presenting a very beautiful landscape painting.

"Look, sir, we're on Lake Malawi, the scenery here is so beautiful, it really looks like a paradise." Mrs. Gu Liuyan couldn't help but scream.

She rode on a white Arabian horse with a pink wide-brimmed lady's hat and a silk ribbon tied around her white chin to protect herself from the intense sun of the highlands.

After more than three days of long journey, I finally arrived at my destination, and the happy mood was indescribable.

She watched as the golden sunlight shone on the surface of the lake, and the lake shone with a dazzling flame-like light, as if the sky was full of flames, and her lips turned into an O-shape in surprise, and her fingers were speechless.

With mountains on both sides of the river, this scene is truly magnificent.

Li Fushou rode to her side, looked at the shadow of his wife riding a white horse like a person in a painting, and admired it heartily; "It's beautiful, it's beautiful."

Gu Liuyan noticed the strangeness in his tone, looked back in a little surprise, and saw that the old man was staring at him intently, and a red cloud immediately flew up on his face, and said a little shyly; "Oh, sir, they're talking about Lake Malawi ......"

"Hahaha...... My wife, this is not Lake Malawi, this is Lake Malombe, which is not even a thousandth the size of Lake Malawi. ”

"Ah...... Isn't a lake of this size a Malawi yet? ”

"Huh...... You will never see mountains on both sides of Lake Malawi at the same time. ”

"Why?"

"Because Lake Malawi is 24 kilometers at its narrowest point, more than 80 kilometers wide at its widest point, and its length reaches 560 kilometers, who can see that far and take in the magnificent scenery of the mountains on both sides?"

"Ah...... Is it so big? How far is that? ”

"It's not far, it's just ahead, about 8 kilometers away."

Hearing that the distance was not far away, Gu Liuyan, who was in a joyful mood at the moment, glanced at Li Fushou narrowly, and deliberately said in an old-fashioned tone; "Master, seeing that this place is so pleasant and picturesque, why don't you and I fight it out with our horses and whips, and win by going to Lake Malawi first!"

"Huh...... I don't know if it's appropriate? Li Fushou looked at this lively little woman, full of vitality, and deliberately replied with a deep groan.

"It's fine, it's not going to be better."

"Since this is the case, then the husband is as a good wife wishes, and how to compare can be drawn down."

"Then let's count down the numbers to 10, ten, nine, eight, seven...... Zero" Gu Liuyan deliberately lengthened his tone when he counted to 7, and then jumped to zero all of a sudden, and took the lead in whipping his horse away, and there was a silver bell-like laughter in the distance; "Giggle...... Here we go! ”

"Oops, that's not fair......"

Li Fushou didn't want to sweep Mrs. Lady's interest at this time, he made a surprised look very cooperatively, and then laughed and whipped his horse to chase after him, sprinkling joyful laughter all the way.

More than 400 horses and mules spread their hooves and galloped wildly on the grassy plain, and the rumbling sound of horses' hooves broke the tranquility of the great plain, creating a wild scene of cavalry charging, which made people's blood boil.

As a necessary skill in life, there is no Queensland who can't ride a horse, Gu Liuyan often follows Li Fushou to ride a horse and hunt rabbits in the wild, and has practiced quite good riding skills.

Soon there was a wide and boundless body of water ahead, with no end in sight to the left and no end to the right, as wide as the sea.

The golden sunlight sprinkled on the surface of the lake, from a distance, it seemed like a sea of fire shining endlessly, that kind of magnificent scenery is rare in the world, compared with the Malombe Lake instantly lowered a few grades, completely incomparable.

Lake Malawi has finally arrived......