Struggle in the Steam Age

The first trade between the islands in the southeast of the Sea of ​​Stars headed by New Sauer Island and the northern archipelago headed by Green Island greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of these nobles and lords on Green Island.

Because for this group of nobles who have been struggling on the northern ice sheet before, this trade is the only good way to turn them around in a short period of time.

So, stimulated by a bright future that could benefit generations, those nobles spent their money and hired professionals from all walks of life to conduct large-scale exploration of the region.

In addition to some of these prospectors coming from the core forces of the lords and nobles, a large part of them were hired by these nobles from outside the island through their personal connections.

Considering the timeliness, the nobleman did not use his network in the Old Continent to find people, but directly issued missions and recruited manpower from the countries of the New Continent.

And taking advantage of this opportunity, the Viscount Surrey also made a small fortune. Because his territory is exactly located in the middle of Green Island, and it is also the only large-scale human settlement and landing point in the hundreds of kilometers of coastline.

Under such circumstances, Fort Surrey, as the largest personnel and material distribution center in the region, has naturally formed a large market. With the arrival of various professionals and materials and the passage of time, the exploration work has also been fully rolled out.

In a short period of time, news of the discovery of new specialties came from almost all the territories.

Obviously, after proactively dispatching professional prospectors, the results of the detection of the entire territory by these nobles within a week or two may exceed that of the previous few years or even ten years. That's why they were able to find many new specialties in such a short period of time.

Soon, the samples of those new special products were sent to Lawrence of Surreyburg along with the investigation report on the expected annual output, and then he made the final identification to see how many could really be used for trade. supplies.

Considering a series of factors such as the island's population, terrain, and the cost and production difficulty of the items themselves, not all of these special products are suitable as trade goods even if they have a certain value.

To give the simplest example, a lord in the north found silver ore with a decent content in the mountains of his territory, and stated in the records that the scale of the silver mine was not too small.

Lawrence was a little excited when he first saw the silver ore, because in his impression, the cornerstone of many desolate places attracting a large number of people and developing was to dig various precious metal mines.

For example, in Lawrence's impression, in his previous life, there were many cities with relatively desolate natural environment but developed in the end. And if you look carefully, you will find that almost all of them are related to resource extraction.

For example, a series of cities in Xianbelia that were built with the help of coal mines, natural gas mines, and even diamond mines, and a series of large port cities in North America that were developed because of gold mines.

But after carefully reading the investigation report and checking the samples of silver ore sent, Lawrence reluctantly rejected the possibility of developing the silver mine.

Because after he comprehensively considered the grade of silver ore, the scale of the entire silver mine and the difficulty of mining. Realizing that if this silver mine is to be developed, the profit is likely to be very small, and it is not impossible to lose money in the event of an accident.

The reason for this situation is also very simple, because the reserves of the silver mine are not very large, and it is located in a mountainous area with complex terrain more than 100 kilometers away from the coastline.

To make matters worse, the entire area is further north than Fort Surrey, and the mountainous area where the mine is located is full of snow and ice all year round, so it costs a lot to mine.

Compared with the high difficulty of mining and the mining cost far exceeding normal silver mines, the silver ore grade and reserves of this silver mine are not too bright.

Although the grade of these silver ores is considered to be upper-middle, according to the priests of the Church of the Mother Earth, the amount of silver metal in the entire mining area is only about 300 tons, which is not a lot of reserves at all.

This silver mine is also accompanied by lead-zinc mines, but even if more than 10,000 tons of lead and more than 7,000 tons of zinc are added, it is very likely that they will not even be able to make money back.

"Since the staff of the Church of the Mother Earth said that this is not feasible, why did the lord send this thing?" Lawrence shook his head puzzled looking at the statistical data on the front of the report.

Because the first few pages of the report have clearly stated the level of minerals and the difficulty of mining in this area, considering that the person who made the report is a priest of the Church of the Mother Earth, this conclusion can basically be regarded as the final conclusion.

However, there must be a reason for this document to be sent to Lawrence, so he continued to read it after adjusting his mood.

Sure enough, in the last few pages of this article the lord proposes a solution.

"Build an east-west railway to connect the east and west coasts of the island, and at the same time make the entire silver mine an important node in the middle of this railway."

"The person who can come up with this idea is either a genius or a lunatic." After reading the solution attached at the end of this analysis report, Lawrence sighed softly, and expressed his admiration for the person who asked the question from the bottom of his heart.

For the island of Green Island, the railway, especially the east-west railway in the north of the island, is actually very necessary to be built.

Leaving aside the huge size of this island, as one of the subarctic archipelagos, Green Island, like these northern islands, has the same northern ice accumulation phenomenon that allows an east-west railway in the northern part of the island to connect the east and west sides of the entire island. The proposal has value.

Because of the ice accumulation problem in the north, it is very difficult for people on the east and west coasts of the island to communicate with each other. To get from coast to coast they have only two options:

Either choose to circle most of the entire island from the south, or you can only choose to use dogs or pony horses to pull a sled across the wilderness in the north.

Obviously, this approach is not conducive to transportation on the island or outside the island. At the same time, it is too cold to cause inconvenient transportation with the inland due to the absence of non-seasonal rivers. Therefore, most of the territories developed by the nobles are along the coast.

On the whole, this is naturally inconvenient for the development of the entire island, especially for the development of inland areas.

For example, this is the case with the nobleman who proposed to develop the silver mine this time. He is also a viscount. At the same time, because the territory is further north, it has a larger territory.

But from the perspective of territory value, except for a short section of coastline that can be used for fishing and hunting very few otters, this piece of territory in the north can be said to be extremely barren.

However, if one wants to choose a road across the north of the island, his territory can be a very good alternative because of its flatness.

Yes, there are flatter places in the north. But even if you don't consider the fact that the more northern areas are almost uninhabited, and the problem of inconvenient use after the roads are built. The problem that the current technical level of the permafrost in the northern region alone cannot solve.

Therefore, in order to avoid asking for trouble, normal people will inevitably choose an area as far north as possible geographically, but definitely not in an area where there is a permafrost layer that is difficult to build buildings to build this passage.

This is why the viscount proposed building a railway at the end of the article. It can be said that the previous report on the silver mine was just an introduction to attract everyone's attention.

In fact, compared to mining a silver mine that is not very meaningful from an economic point of view, the real purpose of this viscount's report is not for this.

The reason why he wants to submit this report is because after the exploration, he found that the local terrain is suitable for building a road, so he hopes to persuade others to decide to build a road around his territory that can bring wealth to the entire territory for a long time. traffic road.