On August 1, 1651, off the southernmost tip of Chiloe Island, off the island of Chiloe, two frigate gunboats of the Third Fleet slowly docked at a trestle made of rough logs. A number of sailors aboard each of the two ships, led by logistical staffs, jumped onto the trestle and walked towards the city not far away.

The weather was not good today, and the sky was a little gloomy, but if you followed their gaze, you could still clearly see that there was a half-built blue wall not far ahead, and some wooden houses with a slightly messy layout. This is Guanhai Port, a colonial port secretly built by the Southern Railway Company to accommodate the growing number of immigrants.

It is said that with the strengthening of the country's ability to naturalize and accommodate foreign immigrants, since last year, the Ministry of Immigration has continued to place orders to several major shipyards in China, such as flute-type ships, "sprint champion" class special ships for immigrants, 1,200-ton sailboats, and large flying shear cargo ships, which are like dumplings and groundwater, and then join the fleets. At the same time, the Navigation School, the South China Sea Fisheries Company, the South China Sea Transport Company, and the East African Transport Company also trained a large number of qualified or unqualified sailors, and finally barely closed the sailor gap formed by the explosion of ships.

As a result, the maritime power of the Republic of China on the east coast of China has been greatly enhanced, and the tide is rising, and the number of ships undertaking the task of transporting migrants in the waters of the South Pacific Ocean has also increased, and now there are as many as 12 ships, and if the transportation is carried in sections (one section from the black water to Australia, and one part in the South Pacific Circulation), it can transport almost 10,000 people to the port of Araukan a year. Such a huge population pressure is huge for the Southern Railway Company. It is also unaffordable in the short term for the relatively barren southern Patagonia region.

However, Mo Ming, the president of the Southern Railway Company, is also a strong person, and he categorically cannot tolerate the influx of these precious people into the mainland. Therefore, with a stroke of his pen. The Southern Railway Company, whose population had swelled to 33,900, began to divert the population outward, for example, the beech fort on Tierra del Fuego received more than 2,000 people, and it was heard that the Southern Railway Company also planned to build another settlement at the southern tip of the island - a settlement with whaling, shrimp and sea beast hunting as its main source of income in the future, with a population of 1,000 people.

In addition, the vast mountainous region of southern Chile, which the Kingdom of Araucania de facto controlled, would also divert a considerable part of the population to colonize. The Southern Rail Corporation has officially informed the country of this. Little Vicente, who acted as the "child emperor" of the East Bank, did not dare to go against the will of the Southern Railway, so he acquiesced to this kind of thing. In addition, there were a considerable number of handicraftsmen among the Ming immigrants. They were able to produce a lot of high-quality daily necessities, which was a great temptation for the entire kingdom of Araucania. Not to mention the fact that they also pay taxes and are nominally subjects of the country, which in theory can greatly increase the revenue of the country's treasury. Therefore, the Araukans pinched their noses and accepted the arrival of these Ming people.

In this way, two or three thousand Ming people, under the leadership of some of the cadres of the Corps and Fort, rode mules and horses, carrying luggage, livestock, grain, seeds, farm tools, and other necessary items to settle down, and walked on rugged mountain roads in the vast south of Chile in search of a place where they could settle down and farm—they were an agrarian people, and naturally they would not live by shepherding sheep like those Araucans, after all, the area of pasture needed to feed a person was relatively large.

The kingdom of Araucania was crammed with two or three thousand people (the entire population of the country did not exceed ten thousand), and it could not accommodate new immigrants for a short time. Therefore, the Southern Railway Company has set its sights on the south-central region of Chile outside the area actually controlled by the Kingdom of Araucania. For example, the less than 1,000 "employees of the Southern Railway Company" (in fact, Ming immigrants) who were stuffed on the banks of the Maolin River were obviously a temptation. And after finding that the Spaniards had almost no reaction, Mo Ming's courage suddenly increased. He soon instructed his men to make a plan to colonize the southern part of Chiloe Island, which was inaccessible to the rest of the world.

After the plan was debated and perfected by many parties, a few months ago, the Navy's Third Fleet almost went out to make a cameo appearance in a transport fleet with their idle warships, and sent as many as 2,000 Ming immigrants and a large amount of supplies ashore. After doing this, they returned to the port of Araucan. Continuing to deliver supplies to this place, which was marked as "Guanhai Port" on the plan, wholeheartedly supported the colonization activities of the Southern Railway Company in the local area.

Out of fear that this colonial act, which was a clear violation of Spanish sovereignty, would be discovered. At first, the Third Fleet did its best to transport personnel and supplies in the middle of the night, but when they discovered that the Spaniards did not have many ships in the Pacific Ocean at all, and that they were all concentrated in Lima, Quito, and Panama, the navy suddenly relented, and they often loaded a shipload of bricks or dozens of Andalusian black cattle to the port of Guanhai to unload their cargo in broad daylight, and acted without any taboos, and seemed to no longer worry about the "surprise" of the "friendly country" of the Kingdom of Spain.

In fact, they were also worried in vain, not to mention that the Spaniards may not be able to go south to the southern waters of Chile for a year, but to say that the colonization of the people on the east coast here, the Spaniards can only protest when they see it, but they will not take any substantive action. You don't see the Caribbean islands claimed by the French in the Kingdom of Spain, the British in the southern part of North America (around the Georgia Mission in Spain) also claimed by the Kingdom of Spain, and the Dutch colonization in New Granada. Bare. Bare. Slap the Spaniards in the face, have you ever seen the Kingdom of Spain go to great lengths about it?

What's more, the colonized areas of the East Coast are still regarded as "barren land" by the Spaniards, and the southern mountains of Chile, which are sparsely populated, inconvenient and barren in terms of resources, have caused friction with the East Coast Republic of China, and the Kingdom of Spain, which is deeply involved in the war, cannot make up its mind. Even if the people on the east coast were pagan countries, even if this was the Pacific Ocean in the eyes of the Spaniards as a "peaceful backyard", there was no reason for the Kingdom of Spain to make a total war with the east coast for this, because it was not worth it at all.

More than 2,000 Ming people landed at Guanhai Harbor in the autumn and began their hard work. The Southern Railway Company divided them into several shifts, cutting and hunting, leveling the land, building city walls, and installing machines, and they were very busy. In order to encourage them to settle in the colony with peace of mind, the Southern Railway Company even promised to provide them with food, cloth, salt and other daily necessities within three years, and they only needed to grow some fruits and vegetables around the town, and raise some cattle and sheep to easily survive the most difficult first three years.

The island of Chiloe is dominated by hills, with low latitudes, low temperatures, and a unique climate - in the southern part of Chile, where precipitation is not very high, it is unexpectedly heavy, resulting in a cold and humid climate. But don't underestimate this place, the soil here is very fertile, because it is basically formed by the decomposition of volcanic rocks, and the humus layer of leaves that have fallen from dense forests over thousands of years, it can be said that the soil here is more fertile than the black soil of Northeast China - the only flaw is probably that it is too humid, not very sunny, and the ground is not very flat.

In the early years, the Spaniards still had some small colonies on the island, but under the two East-West wars and the destruction of the Araucan guerrillas several times, the few white and Mestizo (mixed-race white) colonists on the island had long since disappeared, and even the Araucan Indians disappeared - they either migrated to the territory of the Kingdom of Araucania in the southern mountains, or died in the bloody revenge of the Spaniards - that is, the whole island of Chiloe has now become almost a "ghost domain" 。 The Southern Railway Company sent more than 2,000 Ming colonists at one time, and the Guanhai Harbor colony they formed was probably the largest and perhaps the only human settlement on the island.

These Ming people who were forcibly relocated from Guanhaiwei are basically the bitter military families of the guard and their families. Of course, these people are all military in the archives of the Ming Dynasty, that is, they are all soldiers of the guard, but in fact, these people are not able to fight at all, and they rarely receive military training, just like ordinary Ming farmers. Even, because of the double oppression of the local gentry and the superior officers, they lived even harder than ordinary farmers. This can be seen from their nutritional status, the thin torso, the difficult expression, and the young but already gray hair, all of which clearly tell their Cheng dù who was oppressed by the rulers.

However, there are pros and cons in everything, and the boundless suffering suffered by these Ming people in the Ming Dynasty also exercised their tenacious will and hard-working temperament, which is very good for the Southern Railway Company, because this trait is very suitable for pioneering in remote areas. Perhaps what seemed exhausting and impossible to do to others - such as the Spaniards, the Mestizos, and the Araucans (who were very impatient with heavy work) - were part of the life of the Ming colonists who came from afar. And once they have passed the difficult period of land reclamation, the stability that will follow them will inevitably make them even more happy, so that they can settle down in this place and submit to the rule of the people of the east coast.

With such a source of hard-working immigrants, how could the Southern Railway Company limit its pace to a corner of the harbor? In their plan, when the new wharf of the port of Guanhai is completed and the building materials factory of the port of Araucan is put into production, the colonists of the east coast will gradually move deeper into the interior of the island to exploit the fertile soil and rich beech forests. (To be continued)