The Rise of the European Emperor

I don't know why, but there is much more precious wood in the tropics than in the temperate. Maybe, there is no cold winter in the tropics, and it is suitable for the growth of trees all year round, so that the trees grow better.

Marin suddenly remembered - it seems that Grenada and Panama are also tropical rainforest areas, and some are wood. Among them, there should be a lot of precious wood, right?

However, now that there are not enough manpower, he can only wait for Cuban shipbuilders to bring a few apprentices to Grenada and Panama to identify precious wood. However, there are too many poisonous insects and mosquitoes in the tropical rainforest of Panama, which is more dangerous. On the other hand, Grenada is a safe tropical island with no poisonous mosquitoes, no beasts.

After arranging the collection of precious wood, Marin left Moa with four boats and went north, along the east coast of North America, and first arrived in Savannah, which belongs to the subtropical region.

Kovok rushed to meet Marin with several hundred Cossacks, who was invited into the newly built city of Savannah. Then, Marin was briefed on Kovock's work.

After listening to Kovok's report, Marin learned that in the past two years, with the arrival of 500 Cossacks, in addition to the Savannah grasslands, the Cossacks also laid down a large area of ​​territory in the Savannah area. According to Kovock's estimates, the Savannah colony may now be controlled by six or seven thousand square kilometers.

However, because the Savannah grasslands are surrounded by dense virgin forests, it is not conducive to the performance of the Cossack cavalry. Therefore, they only control a few thousand square kilometers of land now. If it were all grasslands, it would be enough to cover tens of thousands of square kilometers in the past two years.

In the past two years, Kewalk took thousands of immigrants and cut down trees desperately, but only developed more than 1,000 square kilometers of open space for planting various crops, as well as the tung tree, sumac and moso bamboo that Marin focused on. and Mexican upland cotton. Of course, the rice and winter wheat obtained from Daming are also indispensable.

Marin went to inspect the cultivation bases of tung tree, sumac and bamboo. The tung and sumac trees are still growing, and it is not yet clear whether they are good or bad. After all, it takes several years for both types of trees to mature and produce steadily. Moso bamboo is amazing. Moso bamboo grows very fast, and after the rain in spring, the roots are fast, resulting in a lot of Hsinchu bamboo shoots. Now, outside the city of Savannah, a large bamboo forest has appeared, but these bamboos are very short. But Marin knew that Moso bamboo was "ready to go". Once the time is right, the bamboo will jump up and quickly become a tall plant.

Marin was very happy, but he did not forget to urge Kewok to send someone to carefully transplant the young bamboo plants to other places, and let them expand everywhere, and strive for as many as possible.

In addition to bamboo, Kovock also reported on Savannah's agriculture. It's just that Savannah's agriculture is a bit biased. For example, the rice brought from Daming was not well grown in Savannah.

It's not that Savannah is not suitable for growing rice,

But the thousands of white immigrants here are not used to growing rice, and especially dare not go into the paddy fields with bare feet.

So, in desperation, Kewalk simply planted two crops of wheat in Savannah—one winter wheat, one spring wheat, and the wheat...

But this does not affect the cultivation of upland cotton in Mexico. After all, cotton is not cultivated in paddy fields, and those European immigrants are still used to it.

Marin came to the warehouse and saw a lot of wheat and cotton piled up in the warehouse. But because Marin was away for two years, the Savannah colony didn't know what to do with the wheat and cotton. After all, Marin once said that food should not be sold indiscriminately.

Seeing the wheat in the warehouse, Marin didn't care. But seeing those cottons made Marin happy. Coincidentally, Marin brought several cotton spinning wheels from Songjiang Prefecture, which are said to have been invented by Huang Daopo, and there was a family of craftsmen who knew how to build spinning wheels. So Marin asked the craftsman to take the spinning wheel to teach the local women how to use Huang Daopo's spinning wheel to start spinning and weaving. In addition, this craftsman also knows how to play cotton to make quilts.

Excited, Marin asked the craftsman to play a few quilts for himself with a bow, and he also made several high imitation military coats using a technique similar to making quilts. Of course, it's not a green labor insurance military coat, but an ordinary gray cloth military coat. After all, green dyes are also very expensive in this era, so it is better to get the most common gray cloth. The dirty white cloth can be seen clearly, but the gray cloth military coat looks better.

When playing cotton, the craftsman Lao Song couldn't help sighing - the cotton batts produced here are very long, soft and smooth, and belong to the top-quality cotton. He has never seen such high-quality cotton.

Malin said, isn't it? This is authentic Mexican upland cotton, much better than the Asian cotton that Daming is now growing. In the future, Huaxia will basically plant upland cotton. As for high-quality long-fiber long-staple cotton (that is, sea island cotton), it is difficult to popularize because of the high requirements of the growth environment.

...

Seeing that Savannah was developing well, Marin said nothing, and left behind the craftsman Lao Song, who was responsible for instructing local women to learn how to use Huang Daopo's spinning wheel, and was responsible for building a new cotton spinning wheel.

But Marin is a little dissatisfied with Kovock's behavior of planting two crops of wheat. So, Marin asked Kwok to keep planting winter wheat. But in summer, switch to soybeans or peanuts to get enough vegetable oil.

After all, it is not enough for people to eat rice and noodles, but also need a lot of oil and water. The reason why ancient people loved big fat meat is because of lack of oil and water. Therefore, if you use summer to grow soybeans or peanuts, you can get a lot of soybean oil or peanut oil. Moreover, planting soybeans can fix nitrogen and feed the land, making the land more fertile when growing winter wheat.

To this end, Covec specially dispatched a special ship from Savannah to follow Marin's fleet north to New York to obtain soybean seeds. After all, the only places in Marin that grow soybeans are New York and Cuba. But the planting scale in Cuba is very small. If you want enough seeds, you still come to New York.

...

In New York, Marin is also pleased with the development here. The specialties of New York are wheat and soybeans, of course. And this guy Albert, because he loves apples, actually brought a lot of apple seeds from the mainland and planted them in New York.

Seeing the slices of apple saplings, Marin shook his head. To be honest, Apple is indeed a good thing. Moreover, the area of ​​New York in later generations is indeed the origin of apples. But the problem is that there is no advanced refrigeration technology in this era. When apples grow, they can only be sold locally and cannot be transported to other places for sale. Because, after being transported far away, the apple is broken...

"Alternatively, you can make apple cider vinegar... canned apples are also good..." Marin thought.

At the new shipyard in Long Island, New York, Marin let the ships that transported tung oil and raw lacquer accompany him, and removed large barrels of tung oil and raw lacquer, as well as copper nails, so as to facilitate the shipbuilding of the shipyard. Moreover, there is a large amount of tung oil and raw lacquer on the battleship formations that are circumnavigating South America. With these tung oil and raw lacquer, the new shipyard in Long Island, New York, can explode the ship...

...

After a tour of New York, Marin left New York with the fleet and made a brief stop on Cape Breton Island. Subsequently, Marin began to cross the Atlantic with four 250 armed merchant ships and returned to the mainland.

However, Marin did not make much fanfare, but chose to return to the mainland in secret. The reason for this is that Marin should have returned with Columbus Jr.'s fleet, and he has not yet arrived in Europe, so his early appearance would be suspicious. Therefore, he needs to protect the existence of the Pacific route and cannot show up for the time being; secondly, Marin wants to take the opportunity to do something...