Chapter 506 Inspection

There are many strange positions in Queensland’s administrative sequence, such as chief executive, political councilor, and coastal guard captain. These are all compromises. President Li Fushou cannot appoint a Shangri-La governor or an African governor. That is Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The sacred royal power cannot be violated, and doing so is tantamount to direct rebellion.

  Li Fushou likes the title of chief executive very much. There are a lot of appointments of chief house manager, construction chief, southern chief, Shangri-La chief, African chief, and Lin Lin.

   is also a big manager, the level difference is not small.

For example, the general manager of the house, the general manager of the tent, and the general manager of construction are all positions of domestic slavery. The southern general (local), the central general (local), the Shangri-la general, and the Borneo general are all on one side. The officials are heavy and their respective weights are different.

  For example, Wu Xuewen, the chief executive of Shangri-La, is not a political advisor. His weight is still a little lighter. He is not qualified to enter the policy center for the time being. After 10 years of experience, it will be almost the same.

Wu Mozhou’s qualifications are great. After he came to Australia, he was the sole leader. Now he plays the role of political counselor and concurrently as the chief of Africa. He can shock the proposed Mozambique garrison command and can also influence Africa. The expeditionary force can rely on its profound qualifications and relationships to obtain more resources and policies for the Mozambique region, which is a great thing.

  It is not surprising that Li Fushou paid special attention to this trip to Africa.

  Mozambique is indeed a good place. The temperature here averages 20~26 degrees throughout the year. The temperature in the south is lower and the temperature is higher in the north. The overall difference is not much, and it has a warm, spring-like oceanic steppe climate.

The entire Mozambique region covers an area of ​​approximately 1.1 million square kilometers (including Lake Malawi and its surrounding areas), with a coastline of 2,630 kilometers. It is bordered by South Africa and Swaziland to the south, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi to the west, and German Tanzania to the north. , Bordering the Indian Ocean in the east, facing Madagascar across the Strait of Mozambique.

  Plateaus and mountains account for about three-fifths of the total area, and the rest are plains. The lower reaches of the Zambezi River covers an area of ​​330,000 square kilometers, which is one of the largest plains in Africa.

  The land here is fertile and the rainfall is abundant. The annual rainfall is more than 1,000 mm, which is almost equal to the rainfall level in southern Jiangsu, suitable for the development of rice cultivation.

  The area is warm and wet from October to March of the following year each year, and from April to September is the cool and dry season. There is no dry season. It is suitable for planting three crops of rice, sugar cane, rubber, tobacco and other crops throughout the year.

The central part of Mozambique is a platform with an altitude of 300 to 500 meters. The annual rainfall is about 400 to 600 mm. The valley area is suitable for growing wheat, cotton, alfalfa, sisal and other crops. The annual temperature is generally lower than 20 degrees, about 18-20 degrees. The look is cool and pleasant.

   North of 17 degrees south latitude belongs to this area (including Malawi and Northern Province), and the plateau height descends from west to east to the seashore.

  Two of the highest mountains, one is the Malawi Highlands, the east coast of Lake Binyasa, and the other is the Neimoli Highlands, which is 2400 meters high, located near 15 degrees south latitude, and borders German East Africa.

  The rainfall on the high ground in this area is more than 1000 mm, and the Neimoli mountainous area can reach 1500 mm, but the lower valley is only about 900 mm, which is still an important agricultural area.

  Because the indigenous population in this area is not good at farming and is sparsely populated, most of them rely on grazing and picking wild banana forests and fruit trees for their livelihoods, and they can still live well.

  This geographical condition is equivalent to another Australia, and there is no big trouble to rule. Queensland can easily control the area with its strong military power.

In Li Fushou’s memory, I know that Mozambique is a treasure-rich place with rich minerals such as coal, iron, copper, gold, tantalum, titanium, bismuth, aluminum, asbestos, graphite, mica, marble, and natural gas, among which coal reserves are extremely rich. Abundant, the reserves of tantalum ore rank first in the world, and there is no shortage of iron ore and copper ore. .

  60% of the area here is covered by forests, and the total forest resources exceed 2 billion cubic meters. Water resources are abundant, and the hydropower resources on the Zambezi River are inexhaustible.

Li Fushou and his entourage stayed on Boi Island for a week. He took the time to take his wife to explore the beautiful coral reef area on a small boat. The crystal clear waters here made him unable to resist a swim in the sea and completely relaxed his mind and body. .

After that, the fleet set off again and arrived in Hekou Town for inspection. Li Fushou visited Hexi Town and Hezhong Town on horseback, held in-depth discussions with immigrants and local officials, fully understood the difficulties of the current colonization work, affirmed the achievements, and encouraged everyone to take root in Africa and start a pioneering work. A career.

  When returning

  After the road construction site, Li Fushou stopped to watch.

This is a construction site on Central Avenue. There is a garrison with more than 100 soldiers supervising and urging more than a thousand black laborers in the construction. In addition, there are more than a dozen technicians from Queensland, including whites and Chinese, mainly responsible for road exploration and The quality of the whole construction process and the follow-up standard acceptance.

  This construction site is responsible for more than 20 kilometers of roads, constructing avenues about 26 meters wide, all of which are rammed earth and stone pavements, and drainage ditches are built on both sides of the road, and tall trees are transplanted to form a spacious avenue leading to the inland.

"Principal, the construction of the entire Central Avenue is supervised by the Construction Corps led by Kohler Deputy Commander. It is mainly composed of part of the Second Regiment and the Heavy Regiment. There are a total of 32 construction sites along the route. In addition, there are also some construction sites. In the quarry, the Expeditionary Force Command has deployed two cavalry guards along the way. This is the greatest strength we can produce.” Li Shuanzhu Lieutenant Colonel explained.

   "Well, it seems that the construction efforts are good, but the efficiency is a little bit worse."

  Li Fushou nodded. He wore a broad-brimmed military hat to block the sun. He wore ordinary officer's clothing. This attire was neither conspicuous nor easy to integrate with the public, and was very grounded.

  The main reason is that the risk of field inspection is still quite high. He doesn't want to dress like a gun target. Portugal still has many good hunters.

   "Report to the principal, this is because it is too expensive to ship diesel from the United States or Europe. A ton costs about 6 pounds and 11 shillings. Of this, 4 pounds are mostly freight, so we can use manpower as much as possible without machinery."

  "I know that if road engineering is used freely, two or three thousand tons of diesel per month is not a problem, and it is more cost-effective to construct by manpower."

  Li Fushou is also the same. Tractors drink oil just like water. Especially under the heavy load of road construction, tire wear, mechanical wear and diesel consumption are not small numbers, and they accounted for the bulk of the previous colonization costs.

  I arrived in Africa according to local conditions. Anyway, there are too many slave labors here and they are worthless. The province still has to save some, and there are more places to spend money.

   "How's the food here?"

"Report to the principal, for this project site, because there is a large banana plantation nearby, several nearby project sites have organized manpower to come and transport them. Picking the green bananas can leave them for about a week. Enough for 40 people, the staple food is usually this.

  Soldiers usually organize hunting. After hunting bison and wild deer, they chopped up some of the offal and buffalo offal and boiled them in the mashed banana to increase nutrition for the black laborers.

  Some flour will be rationed every week on the construction site. They are all delivered from the towns. After being fried with beef, they taste good. Every worker sends out a piece of butter cake every three days.

Generally, some beef offal or butter cakes are added to the meal every morning, because they have to work in the morning, so that they will have more energy after eating, and the meal in the afternoon will not be added to prevent these black workers from having energy after finishing work at night. Escape is inconvenient to manage. "

   "Oh, it seems that you have thought of a lot of ways." Li Fushou smiled and did not go on asking further.

  Some food is good these days. It is impossible to eat two steaks every morning and drink a glass of milk before working. The landlord’s house has no surplus food!

  Can save or save a little, this purpose is correct.

   "By the way, I see that many workers have lighter skin. What is the reason?"

"Report to the principal that this belongs to the Macua-Lomae tribe among the local indigenous people. Before the 16th century, there were a large number of Arabs in Mozambique who set up strongholds here for human trafficking. The slave trade in Mozambique was very famous. Portugal People are equally enthusiastic about this after they came, and there have been many mixed blacks and whites, and they are the offspring of these people."

   "Oh, this way!" Li Fushou suddenly realized.

"Principal, in our management, most of these lighter-skinned Makua-Romuai tribes are used as labor leaders. They are used to manage the laborers of other tribes with darker skin. They do not need to participate in labor. The excellent ones can sometimes be divided into some sugar, beef and flour, which greatly reduces our management intensity. We also learned this trick from the colonists in Britain, France and other countries, and the effect is very good."

  "Not bad, not bad, the stone of the other mountain can be used for jade!"

Li Fushou gently clamped his legs into the belly of the horse, and the horse ran at small steps. The roads around this area have been cleared with a straight forward contour line. After the land has been turned deep, fly ash and stone powder are added to ram, and a layer is added. The crushed stones are compacted, all by hand.

Workers in the dark on the construction site are working, some are digging ditches on the side of the road, some are cleaning the roots of the big trees in the planned road, a group of more than a dozen laborers are pulling heavy stone rollers back and forth to compact the road, or It was a few people working together to ram the road with iron basins full of gravel, all sweating.

  Road construction is contracted by groups, basically divided into sections every 100 meters, each section is contracted by a group of laborers, and several light-skinned foremen are responsible for supervising and comparing the advantages and disadvantages according to the construction progress.

The group that performs well eats well, and the foreman also has rewards. The average group can only eat half full, and the foreman has no reward. The poor performance group can be miserable. Not only can they only eat some leftovers, but also the foreman. Will be demoted to slave labor and participate in the labor together, and a new foreman will be sent to take charge.

  Under such a strict supervision system, the foreman dared not relax a little bit, and the whip in his hand was swaying loudly, fiercely one by one.

This system has also liberated the soldiers. They only need to keep their guns in order. Half of them are resting during the day. Their main job is to take turns guarding at night, not only to prevent black laborers from escaping and to maintain security in the camp, but also To prevent ferocious beasts from rushing into the camp to hurt people.

Mozambique is a paradise for wild animals. There are ferocious lions, wild leopards, African leopards, and groups of African hyenas and wild wolves. There have been cases where African lions rushed into their neighbors to kill and bite more than 20 people. For the casualties, the leading company commander was also punished for this.

  In addition, the herd of bison is also very scary.

  African buffalo is full of wild nature. Most of the Mozambique area is African buffalo. This wild buffalo can weigh up to one ton in adulthood. It has a wide head and long horns, strong limbs, violent and aggressive temperament. They are the ones that attack the camp most.

  One camp once killed more than 30 wild buffaloes in a row when an African wild buffalo herd attacked. This made the crazy wild buffalo herd retreat.

  The reason for the African wild buffalo herd to attack humans is very simple, because the road construction team destroyed a large number of trees and bushes, burned weeds, and caused serious disturbance to the habitat of the wild buffalo herd.

  For the wild buffalo herd to deliver meat to the door, the soldiers of the Construction Corps generally welcome.

Isn’t wild beef more fragrant than dry rations?

  Li Fushou and his entourage then inspected the camp. The camp was built by a small river, surrounded by barbed wire on three sides, and the other side was a clear river.

  A row of simple houses were built along the small river, which is a frame built of wood. The top is mixed with mud and large thatch leaves, and the roof is made layer by layer.

Mosquito nets were placed on the surrounding area. This is the residence of the soldiers and Chinese technicians. The barracks and sentinel kitchens are located in this area. The plan is relatively tidy. The surrounding area of ​​the camp is cleaned with bushes and weeds, and the sewage pond is filled and covered with white lime. Wall corners to prevent poisonous insects and snakes from crawling in.

  The black labor residential area is separated from the soldier residential area by a wooden fence. There is a 10-meter wide no man’s land in the middle. Soldiers pull a rope to dry beef jerky here.

This is almost the case in the black labor area. It is a simple house built with wooden frames, but it is relatively low. You can only get in with your head down. It is ok to sit in the house, but it is definitely not possible to stand up, and there are no mosquito nets around it. , The health status is also slightly worse.

  According to the introduction of the entourage;

  The foreman sleeps at the door. There are 20 people in a simple house. This kind of simple house can be lifted away as long as the roof is lifted off, which is very convenient.

  Li Fushou then looked at the kitchen and warehouse, and even chatted with a few black workers who stayed in the camp through an interpreter. The overall feeling was pretty good.

  He also knew that this might be a model camp specially selected by the people below to deal with the inspection by the leader.

  The black laborers were obviously fake. They opened their mouths and laughed when they asked them questions, working here as if they had fallen into a honeypot.

  According to the translation;

  They are all very happy to participate in this great construction. The officers and soldiers in the camp taught them to build wooden houses, teach them to sing, and even dried beef jerky for them to eat...

  Well, Li Fushou frowned and couldn't listen anymore. This is too fake.

  Maybe in other camps, black laborers don’t even have simple workshops. Every day, besides labor, they still labor...

  Let’s go, Colonel Koch is not easy. There are more than 3,000 people under him, who have to take care of 60,000 to 70,000 black laborers and be considerate of his difficulties.

  This is also the old man who built the Red River Valley Reservoir with the German military officer team. The young man in his early 30s is now in his 40s. There is no credit and hard work.

  Li Fushou made up his mind;

  When the Central Avenue project is completed, he will be rewarded with a rank of brigadier general and a high-level medal, and he will be placed in the Whampoa Military Academy for retirement.

The Whampoa Military Academy can set up a World Military Strategy Research Institute, and let Brigadier General Koch be the director. Anyway, the level is enough. Find time to bring the delegation to Europe for exchanges. If there is a war, check it out, and write a report and submit it. mission accomplished.

  (End of this chapter)