1850 American Gold Tycoon

"Damn Brannan! Black-hearted businessman! I curse you to hell!"

Liang Yao heard Sven's hysterical roar, they could have made more.

The selling price of pans at the port is 6 US dollars each, shovels are 8 US dollars each, and pickaxes are 7 US dollars each. According to this price, after paying off all debts, Sven will still have a lot of money left and become a small rich man. .

The pilot Zhang Bingliang, who had treated them coldly along the way, came to Liang Yao and exchanged a few words with him after they landed. He just saw that Liang Yao had obtained some gold and asked Liang Yao for advice on how to make money.

A fully loaded convoy arrived at the port triumphantly. A dozen gold diggers, armed with live ammunition, escorted three carriages to the port and boarded the merchant ship leaving San Francisco under the envious eyes of everyone.

There is no doubt that they were the lucky few who managed to find gold and brought it out of San Francisco alive.

"As long as we work together, we can be rich like them and return home in fine clothes."

Liang Yao drew a pie for the Deng family.

"Third brother, you understand what ghosts say and are knowledgeable. We brothers will listen to you and my second uncle."

Deng Wenyu moved his fiery gaze away from the motorcade and directed his fiery gaze at Liang Yao.

"How can we mess up the seniority! Liang Yao is of the same generation as us. We should listen to our elders and listen to our second uncle."

Deng Wenyao was dissatisfied. He was six or seven years older than Liang Yao, and why did the Deng family let an outsider, Liang Yao, make the decision.

Deng Yan was like a mirror: "I am a rough man. I have only served as a soldier and caught fish, but I have never dug for gold. What Wen Yu said makes sense. The third brother is a man who has read books and has great knowledge. Listen, Third brother’s.”

Deng Yan didn't care about seniority issues. Things were so expensive in San Francisco, so how to gain a foothold here was the most important issue right now.

"Boss Deng!"

A man wearing a shabby shirt, canvas suspenders, and an old windbreaker with a weathered face came forward.

The man's long braid trailing behind his back was incompatible with his attire and seemed a bit inconsistent, at least that's what Liang Yao thought.

"Mingsheng."

Deng Yan was stunned for a while and recognized this man.

Cai Mingsheng and Deng Yan were from the same hometown. In the 23rd year of Daoguang reign (1843), they were kidnapped and sold to Peru as piglets. After many twists and turns, they escaped and settled in California. Became one of the first Chinese to come to California.

Deng Yan introduced several Deng family members and Liang Yao to Cai Mingsheng one by one. When introducing Liang Yao, Cai Mingsheng's attitude seemed somewhat respectful.

When Cai Mingsheng was still in Xiangshan, the Liang family was a well-known family of local officials. He did not know that changes had occurred in the Liang family at this time, and the family was in decline.

Cai Mingsheng invited everyone to stay at his home temporarily. Liang Yao, Deng Yan and others did not refuse this proposal. Prices in San Francisco were extremely high, and the food and accommodation expenses in the inn were beyond their affordability.

After leaving the port, San Francisco is much deserted, with not many people on the streets. Most people have gone to the mining areas to pan for gold, and there are only a few scattered pedestrians on the streets, and these people are basically men.

As for women, you can only see some gorgeously dressed women soliciting customers when passing by several brothels. Next to the brothel is the casino, which provides one-stop services specifically for gold diggers.

Of course, these are all Brannan's properties, and he wants to squeeze every grain of gold out of every gold digger's pocket.

Although California has experienced explosive population growth in the past two years, the influx of people to California are basically young and middle-aged men, and the population structure is extremely unreasonable.

Only five percent of the population is female, and except for a small number of family members, the rest of the female population are all prostitutes.

In just a week or two in California, these prostitutes can earn money that prostitutes in the eastern United States will never earn in a lifetime. This unreasonable population structure can easily cause a series of security problems, not to mention that this is a remote gold mining area, and the security situation can be imagined.

After walking past the brothel and casino, Liang Yao passed by a scorched ruin. It was obvious that a fire had just broken out here, and a heat wave hit his face, making people feel extremely stuffy.

The gold diggers put the black scorched earth into a bucket, poured the scorched earth on a large canvas, and raised the canvas vigorously to let the lighter, gold-free scorched earth float away in the wind. Then they formed a circle and collected the remaining gold. Looking for gold in the scorched earth below.

A few steps away from them was a charred corpse still smoking.

"Gold! Gold! I found gold!"

Soon, someone in the crowd picked up a gold nugget the size of a soybean and shouted excitedly. The gold diggers around him all cast unfriendly glances at him.

"The most important thing in the gold rush area is to keep a low profile. It's hard to say whether this person will survive tonight." Cai Mingsheng said, shaking his head with some regret.

"Is there a fire here?"

Deng Yan looked at the scorched earth and desolate city of San Francisco and asked in confusion.

"Every day, gangsters set fire to houses here. These are just small fires. Last year, there were four or five fires throughout San Francisco. Last month, when foreigners were celebrating the Chinese New Year, five or six fires broke out in the city a day. Fires are not unusual either.”

Cai Mingsheng said calmly that he had been accustomed to this phenomenon for a long time.

"The gold content of these scorched earth is higher than the gold content of the mineral soil in the mining area." Liang Yao knew that this was what later generations called the San Francisco Fire. Before the U.S. government took effective control of this disorderly and chaotic city, it basically burned down the buildings. I survived the fever again.

Gold can bring out the darkest side of human nature.

"Master Liang comes from a family of officials after all, and his joints are obvious." Cai Mingsheng said with approval.

"People eat people here!"

Even though Deng Yan had been a soldier and had seen blood, he had a creepy feeling after seeing this scene, fearing that he would also become an unknown charred corpse here that day.

"It's so lawless. Doesn't the foreign court care about it?"

Deng Wenyao said angrily, but Cai Mingsheng didn't know how to answer Deng Yan's question. After all, the foreign courts were very different from those of the Qing Dynasty.

Cai Mingsheng settled down here relying on his carpenter skills, married an Indian woman, and had a pair of children. His life was neither good nor bad.

At this time, the Chinese Exclusion Act had not yet been enacted, and California was still a lawless place in the United States. Of course, the international prestige of the Qing Dynasty has not plummeted at this time, and he has not yet suffered particularly serious discrimination here.

After finishing a fairly sumptuous meal, Liang Yao took out a one-ounce piece of gold and handed it to Cai Mingsheng.

Cai Mingsheng refused, so Liang Yao took Cai Mingsheng's calloused hands and patted the gold into Cai Mingsheng's palms.

"If Uncle Cai refuses to accept the gold from this junior, I will be embarrassed to ask Uncle Cai for help if I encounter any difficulties in the future."

Liang Yao had already talked about this, and Cai Mingsheng was too embarrassed to refuse anymore, so he accepted Liang Yao's gold.

Liang Yao asked Cai Mingsheng about the recent situation in California.

I learned from Cai Mingsheng that after nearly two years of mining, the gold-producing area near San Francisco was almost exhausted, and the gold output was getting less and less. In 1848 and the first half of 1849, there were lucky gold rushes every now and then. Customers dug up gold nuggets, even fist-sized gold.

By the second half of 1849, such news had almost disappeared. After Christmas, some gold prospectors have made up their minds to go mining in new mining areas in the Sacramento area, more than 100 kilometers away.

When mentioning California, the first thing that later generations think of is San Francisco (that is, San Francisco. After gold was discovered in Melbourne, Australia, in 1851, Chinese immigrants called it New Gold Mountain. San Francisco, where gold was discovered earlier, called it San Francisco. This book San Francisco, San Francisco, and Golden Mountain are currently used to refer to familiar international metropolises such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. However, Sacramento, the capital of California, is not well-known.

When you mention Sacramento, you have to mention a person who is closely related to the California Gold Rush.

That was John Sutter, a large planter. James Marshall, who discovered large amounts of gold in the American River and the Sierra Nevada, was a carpenter who worked in Sutter's sawmill.

It is a pity that God gave Sartre a chance, but Sartre did not have the mind like Brannan.

After discovering gold, Sartre was worried that the gold rush would destroy his local industry. Of course, Sartre wanted to make a fortune alone. He tried to block the news and monopolize gold by himself. But such news could not be his. Can it be blocked?

Although Brannan forced Liang Yao to buy supplies and Liang Yao was very disgusted with Brannan, he had to admit that Brannan was indeed a very smart speculator.

Brannan and Sartre's vision and structure are not at the same level at all. This also destined the ending of the last two people.

"Sart is also my former employer. He owns a lot of land in Sacramento. The governor of Mexico previously granted him a lot of land. Together, these lands are larger than our Xiangshan City.

It's just that now those gold diggers think these lands are unclaimed lands. Those gold diggers also stole things from my former employer from time to time. A few days ago, they even stole two cows from my former employer and slaughtered them to eat. The life of my former employer is getting worse every year. "

Cai Mingsheng couldn't help but sigh that when he fled north from the silver mines in Peru, his former employer finally took him in. His Indian wife was also Sartre's employee. For Sartre, Cai Mingsheng is still somewhat grateful.

Everyone was surprised to hear that Sartre alone owned a land larger than Xiangshan. Even in Guangdong, there are only a handful of such large landowners. It's just that the large farms in the western United States and the large landowners in the country at this time are not the same concept.

Although the United States had a population of 23 million in the mid-19th century (the population was only slightly less than the British population at the same time), more than 90% of the population was concentrated on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The vast western region is sparsely populated, even including Indians.

The Louisiana area purchased from Napoleon for $12 million during Jefferson's time is still poorly developed and sparsely populated, let alone California, which was snatched from Mexico just two years ago and is further away from the eastern region. area.

Although every gold digger here believed that the land in the west was unclaimed land, Liang Yao still felt that he should take precautions and obtain a piece of land with legal ownership first.

In this case, even if the big conglomerates from the eastern United States move to California soon, he and his compatriots will have a legal place to settle.

Of course, he also wanted to make a fortune before those big eastern conglomerates arrived.

Wait until those large consortiums with advanced gold mining machinery, equipment, technology and abundant funds arrive in California. They, the gold diggers who dig with shovels, will definitely not be able to compete with those big consortiums.

By then the gold mining legends of individuals and small teams will be swept into the dustbin of history.

Liang Yao, who had worked on Wall Street for several years, knew very well what those capitalists looked like. Compared with them, Brannan was considered a philanthropic person.

In San Francisco under Brannan's control, the gold diggers can at least have something to drink. After all, no matter how powerful Brannan is, he is only an individual and a relatively small interest group with limited control. He also needs the gold diggers. Help him dig the gold out of the soil.

Therefore, the gold diggers can at least have a drink of soup. When the big conglomerates settle in California, the gold diggers may not even be able to smell the soup.