How important is food to the colonists? Historically, Spanish colonists landed on Peace Island to establish the city of San Salvador, but because of their bad relations with the local indigenous people (the indigenous people in two indigenous villages on the island were driven away by the Spanish), the indigenous people on the land refused to sell food to them.
Then, the Spanish colonists on the island lived a miserable life of "filling and hungry". The food was mainly sent by Manila. If the Manila grain ship came late, the colonists on the island would starve for a long time.
The worst is Jamestown, the first colony of the English in North America in the early 17th century. In the cold winter of 1609, the British colonists in Jamestown offended the Indian natives who provided them with food and lost their food source. Then, many of the 500 colonists in Jamestown died of hunger. The worst is that many people ate the bodies of their starved companions to survive, and even killed their companions to eat meat... Then, only 60 of the 500 colonists in Jamestown survived. These 60 people had eaten the meat of their companions...
It is precisely because of reading these history that Marin never blindly when colonizing. Without colonizing a place, Marin tried to avoid fierce conflicts with the indigenous people at the beginning. Because conflicts with the indigenous people too early may be difficult to gain a foothold.
In addition, whenever we go, Marin always considers food sources as the most important thing. For example, when Marin colonized North America, he first colonized the two islands of North America, instead of rushing to land rashly. After the food supply of the two islands of North America stabilized, he began to plot against New York. Even if the colonization of New York failed, the two islands of North America could provide enough food supply to the colonists.
Marin also considered a lot of things to set up a stronghold on Heping Island. Heping Island is located at the exit of Keelung Port formed by the convergence of several Tamsui Rivers. The south bank is opposite Keelung Port. It belongs to the Tamsui area and the shore is also an alluvial soil area, which is suitable for agriculture. Of course, it is the villagers of Jilong Village who are farming.
The north shore is the stone coast, and outside its northeast coast is a saltwater area where you can get water and boil salt. The 10 sun stoves brought by Kongtai are placed on the northeast coast to boil sea water and get salt.
Of course, the colonists are not short of salt now, because a lot of salt was brought on the boat. But the sun stove did not consume firewood, it was not cooking time, and it was also wasteful. Therefore, while Kong Tai directed the masons to build the Majia Fort, he arranged a few wives brought by the masons to help him go to the beach to get the sea water and boil salt. In this way, while building the Majia Fort, he also got a lot of salt every day.
Salt is a good thing. In Beihai or the Ming Dynasty, salt may not be rare. However, it is a very precious thing for the French people on Taiwan. Because most of the French people do not know how to cook salt. Therefore, salt is also a kind of hard currency on the island, and can be exchanged for many things. For example, venison, deer skin, deer antler, such as wood... These things are not worth anything in the eyes of the natives...
What do the indigenous people like the most? Salt, iron tools and cloth. But Kongtai currently has no conditions to supply iron tools and cloth, so he had to supply salt first, mainly to establish good relations with the local indigenous people.
As for the land that was cheated on the east coast of Keelung Port, Kong Tai did not rush to land on the shore to build a fortress. The main reason is that the building materials are insufficient...
Before, Kong Tai did not expect to successfully exchange land on land, so the cement and bricks brought were insufficient, which could only satisfy the construction of a village on Heping Island, and there was no extra to land on the shore to build a building.
Therefore, Kong Tai simply asked the villagers of Jilong Village to row a raft to farm, but reserved a place to build a fortress. When the Beihai National fleet arrives next time, he will send someone to build a serious castle.
If you build a castle, you don’t use bricks and cement, but stone. The reason why Majiabao uses bricks and cement is mainly because it is considered to have a fast construction speed. After all, it will be OK to make the bricks well, apply cement, and the wind and sun are exposed. Unlike building a stone castle, you have to collect stones first and then build them slowly, which is very time-consuming. If a strong enemy comes halfway through the construction of the castle, the consequences will be unimaginable...
But it was different when building a land castle, because Kong Tai didn't have to worry. With Majia Castle on Heping Island as the base camp, he was not in a hurry to build a castle on land. He planned to hire the people of Jilong Village and send his masons to mine quarries and store them together. When the materials were enough, he would slowly build a solid stone castle during the slack farm.
Why don't you use cement? If you don't use reinforced concrete or bamboo reinforced concrete, castles made of brick cement are not as strong as stone fortresses. The advantage of brick cement is that it is fast construction speed, but to the degree of solidity, it is really not good. Unless there is steel bar supply.
However, the cost of producing steel bars in this era was too high, so Marin's decision was to vigorously promote bamboo planting in the colonies in the future, and the construction was mostly made of bamboo reinforced concrete. Unless it was an important military fortress, luxury reinforced concrete would be used. In the future, cement buildings, such as river embankments, would also choose to import bamboo from North America. Bamboo has now taken root in Savannah, and Marin gave orders to bamboo to give enough space to run around, even if the grain fields were to make way for bamboo. In addition, bamboo shoots were never allowed...
After all, every tender bamboo shoot is an ungrown bamboo. In the future, building a cement building requires a lot of bamboo tendons. How can Malin tolerate bamboo seedlings being eaten by people?
Not only that, in the future, Marin also plans to cut down trees and plant bamboo everywhere in North America. With enough bamboo, there is material to build river embankments and prevent floods.
There are many large rivers in North America, such as the Mississippi River. But if you want to use the fertile soil on these large rivers, you must be prepared to withstand floods. The annual flow of the Mississippi River is more than ten times that of the Yellow River, and it is very scary to initiate floods. Only by building enough flood control embankments can you make good use of this golden river.
In addition, even small rivers like the Hudson River in New York occasionally flood in summer. Therefore, every river with a scale has the need to build a flood control embankment. The demand for bamboo is also very, very large. It is impossible to use steel bars, and Marin's wealth can't be used even if it increases by 10,000 times. After all, there are so many river embankments that need to be built. The "muscles" required to build a river embankment are only bamboo...
In fact, Marin also plans to use Dongfan Island as a base in the future to purchase bamboo seeds from the Ming Dynasty without limit and bring them back to southern North America to plant. In this way, North America can provide enough bamboo tendons for the local area as soon as possible. After all, local rivers such as the Ames River also need to build a flood control embankment of bamboo reinforced concrete. Especially the Ruhr area, located on the banks of the Rhine River, it is common to encounter floods.
In fact, there were bamboos on Tai Island at this time. The local unique variety - Taibang Gui Bamboo, is an excellent variety with strong toughness and high bending strength. However, Kong Tai didn't know. Moreover, even if he knew, he would not dare to bring people rashly into the jungle of Tai Island to find this kind of bamboo.
Chapter completed!