Zheng Cai's threat suddenly made Tang Garcia sober up, although he didn't know how the young man heard the story he made up, but he knew very well that his life was in Zheng Cai's hands.

After receiving the warning, Tang Garcia suddenly didn't dare to play his imagination wildly. He told them honestly about his three years in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Compared with the mouth just now, Tang Garcia, who spoke again, obviously became much more cautious, and some things that he did not remember clearly, he would recall them well and then say them, and he would also add a rumored modifier in front of what he heard.

This time, the young man on the other side seemed much calmer and more relaxed, quietly sipping tea, listening to what he said, without urging him at all.

Although Tang Garcia spoke in detail this time, Chongzhen roughly understood that the Spaniard knew most about the Mexican region, especially the Yucatan Peninsula and the Valley of Mexico, and did not know much about the other Spanish American colonies.

However, this is understandable. These two areas were probably the areas where the Spanish colonizers were most adapted, with deserts and deserts further north to the north and dense tropical primeval forests to the south.

Apparently the Spaniards in the Iberian Peninsula had not yet developed immunity to tropical diseases, so the Yucatan Peninsula and the Valley of Mexico, which were suitable for human habitation, became the centers of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

The Yucatan Peninsula was the place where the Spaniards first landed to discover Mexico and was considered by the Spaniards to be a miracle given to Spain by God.

The Yucatan Peninsula is located in southeastern Mexico, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The terrain of the whole peninsula is high in the south and low in the north, with an average altitude of less than 200 meters. It has a tropical climate, with tropical grasslands in the north and tropical forests in the south. Moderate rainfall throughout the year. The vegetation is dominated by savannah.

Although there are no rivers in the north-west of the peninsula, the northern region is the most important food producer of the Viceroyalty of New Spain thanks to abundant rainwater and groundwater. For most of the year, cool sea breezes blow both day and night, making the peninsula's climate not so hot and suitable for these Spanish colonists.

Ever since the Spanish discovered the Yucatan Peninsula, they have rejected the region's Indians as a settlement for immigrants from within the country.

This area is also the most economically developed in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, but it has developed a plantation economy. A large number of the upper echelons of the New Spanish colonies chose to settle here.

The Valley of Mexico is located in the southern part of the Mexican Plateau. The Mexican Plateau is surrounded by huge mountain ranges from the east, west and south, and the edge of the mountain range is steep on the outside and gentle and wide on the inside, so that the plateau resembles a table bulge on both sides of the coastal plain in terms of geomorphology, so it is called "Mesa" (meaning table-shaped plateau).

The Mexican highlands have a mild climate with four seasons of spring all year round. The Valley of Mexico is located on the lacustrine plains of Lake Texcoco, surrounded by rivers that make the plains ideal for farming.

After the Spanish occupied the area, they began to build Mexico City on the ruins of the Indian city of Tenochtitlan as a central city to control the Mexican highlands.

The Spanish rule over the colonies was divided into four levels: the governorate - the presiding district of the Inquisition, the province - the town.

The municipality was the smallest administrative unit in the colony, and it came in two forms: one was the Spanish municipal district; One is the jurisdiction of indigenous municipalities. The former was developed by Spanish colonialist settlements, while the latter was a settlement that was forcibly incorporated by Spanish colonizers.

The main purpose of the Spaniards in developing the American colonies was to plunder gold and silver mines, so the most important industries in the colonies were mining and smelting. All the administrative and natural resources of the colonies revolved around the mining industry.

The mining industry needed a lot of manpower, which is why the Spaniards instituted a policy of indigenous settlements that did not allow them to move at will.

Agriculture and animal husbandry in the colonies also developed around the various mines, which were designed from the beginning to meet the needs of the miners, not to conduct foreign trade.

Only in parts of the Yucatan Peninsula and a few islands in the Caribbean, the Spaniards set up sugar plantations and supplied Europe with large quantities of granulated sugar.

Nearly 80 years ago, missionaries in the Viceroyalty of New Spain claimed that more than 9 million Indians had been baptized as a pioneer of the Church in the American colonies.

But Don Garcia heard from his uncle, who was a clerk in the governor's office, that there were only about 1 million Indians in Mexico who paid taxes.

The decline of the Indian population not only forced the Spanish plantation owners to continue to import black slaves, but also the miners who mined the mines fell into a dilemma.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain used a system of servitude imposed on the native Indians for the human resources for the gold and silver mining in Mexico.

This system of servitude, known as the Koatquay system, required every adult Indian man, between the ages of 18 and 50, to spend one of every seven years away from home and on orders from the Governor's Office to work in designated mines.

During the mining period, these Indian miners had little income and were punished with cruel punishment for being lazy and stealing gold and silver bullion.

Indian miners rarely returned home intact, and many of their families often suffered from hunger and cold because they lost a major labor force.

In addition, after too much contact with these Spanish colonists, the Indians, who were forced into captivity, died in large numbers because they were unable to resist smallpox and other strong infectious diseases.

According to Uncle Don Garcia's estimates, in less than a hundred years, the number of Indians in Mexico has decreased by about 90%.

Therefore, in this situation, it is basically an impossible idea to exchange Chinese goods for cotton, sisal, cocoa, coffee, and other materials in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

The Viceroyalty of New Spain did not have so many supplies to exchange, and even some of them were mostly in the Yucatan Peninsula, from which the Mexican Plateau to the Pacific coast would be unbearable.

The reason why Chinese goods can be transported to the Caribbean Sea by this route is because the raw silk, silk, and porcelain produced in China are all high-value goods.

Moreover, there is no inflation in China, and compared to Spain, which has high inflation, any Chinese goods represent good quality and low price. Even with a little shipping costs, the Spaniards still find it cheap.

It was precisely because of this economic consideration that the Spanish merchants who traveled from Mexico to Manila preferred to waste their positions and bring only valuable goods such as silver than to bring a batch of raw materials that could not be sold for a price.

Zhu Youzhen opened his mouth, he didn't know what to say, although he knew that Spain's efficiency in the development of the colonies was the lowest, and basically the wealth exploited by the Spaniards from the colonies was either sent to China or to other European countries.

A European seems to have said so about the plight of the Spaniards, that the Kingdom of Spain is as if there is only one mouth, and the wealth looted from the colonies is only chewed and tasted, and then there is nothing.

Zhu Youzhen originally thought that this evaluation was too exaggerated, after all, Spain relied on wealth from the Americas, and it had dominated Europe for hundreds of years.

But now it seems that this assessment is very apt. This predatory exploitation of the colonies did not bring about any social change in Spain itself, but rather destroyed Spain's own handicraft and agriculture because of these easily acquired wealth.

He was silent for a long time, and finally couldn't help but ask: "Although the climate in northern Mexico and the plains near the Pacific coast is hot, according to you, these areas are rich in water.

Why can't it be developed into a cotton plantation? Although the gold and silver mines are tempting, after all, most of them are under the control of the Doge's Palace, and the plantations are produced every year, so has no one considered those Spanish immigrants? ”

Tang Garcia thought about it seriously before he replied cautiously: "The best land in Mexico has been occupied by those pioneers and great nobles.

For them, it was much cheaper for them to find a gold and silver mine on their own land than to work a plantation.

After all, mining is only a small area, and only a small number of supervisors are needed to control a large number of miners, but the number of overseers on the plantation is several times more, and the cost is not cost-effective.

And the output of the plantation also needs to organize transportation and find channels to sell, which does not take half a bit of energy. For these large landowners, who had a lot of wealth, they preferred to spend this time on balls and hunting.

As for the later immigrants, if they wanted to develop plantations, they had to go to remote mountains and valleys, which on the one hand were not complete, and on the other hand, this terrain was convenient for the Indians to flee.

In the end, most of the people had no intention of settling in the colony for long, they just wanted to make a windfall and then go back to China to get the title of squire and live a leisurely landlord life.

Therefore, they could not go to the trouble of spending money to build a productive plantation in the colony and connect themselves to the colony. ”

Tang Garcia's explanation is very real, and it is of great help to Chongzhen to understand the Spanish American colonies of this era.

For example, although the Spaniards have been operating in Mexico for more than 100 years, most of their presence is in the Caribbean Sea and near the southern part of the Mexican Altiplano.

The Spanish colonies on the Pacific coast were developed by the Spanish in the port of Acapulco in Mexico and the Viceroyalty of Spain and Peru, built on the remains of the Inca Empire and centered on Lima.

Although the Spaniards had long discovered the California Peninsula on the west coast of North America, they had not developed into this area, but had always focused on the area between the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru.

Perhaps the Spaniards wanted to link their two colonies, or perhaps because of the abundance of gold and silver deposits in the two colonies, they felt that the area between the two colonies might also contain rich gold and silver resources.

Tang Garcia's intelligence brought good news and bad news to Zhu Youzhen.

The bad news is that the China-America trade route he envisioned is estimated to be greatly discounted. And the good news is that if the Ming develop the west coast of North America, it will not be interfered with by these European colonizers.

Zhu Youzhen stared at Tang Garcia for a long time, and suddenly asked, "Do you want to get rich?" ”