Chapter 1697: Haiti resources
Spain has been operating on the island of Haiti for nearly ten years, building several castles. When Columbus arrived in Haiti, Haiti was the most populous island in the Caribbean, with millions of people, more than Cuba.
However, there was a smallpox outbreak in Haiti, which cost tens of thousands of people on the island. But after years of childbirth, the population has returned to millions.
In the original history, the Spanish colonists brought smallpox many times, allowing the Taino people on the island to experience many terrible smallpox eruptions. By 1544, after several smallpox outbreaks, Haiti Island, which was originally a million people, was actually empty ...
In desperation, Spain had no choice but to abandon Haiti and develop it into Cuba. After all, the development of colonies also requires labor.
Later, the British and French came to Haiti, abandoned by the Spaniards. But no one was there, so they actively introduced black slaves from Africa. In later generations, Haiti has become a black-dominated island.
Today, the Spaniards are scared away and replaced with Marin to run Haiti, the situation is very different. Beihai, under Marin, attaches great importance to health issues.
It can be said that in today's Beihai country, there are almost no problems with urination and urination. Moreover, Marin ordered to raise cats of other colors besides black cats in the city to catch rats and reduce the possibility of a plague outbreak.
At the same time, the police in Beihai also shoulder the task of early warning of smallpox. Once smallpox patients are found, they are immediately quarantined. Normally, ports such as Emden Port in the North Sea country need to sprinkle some quick lime on the ground and the pier from time to time to isolate the virus.
Even Marin strictly stipulates that foreign sailors are only allowed in the tavern on the pier and are prohibited from landing. If you want to go ashore? Yes, go to the bathhouse on the pier and wash it with hot water. At the same time, the clothes should be cooked in the lime pond and then dried. Only then can we enter Emden City.
Such a strict entry and exit system has made it almost impossible for Beihai to suffer any major epidemic for so many years. Even if there are cases of epidemics, they are basically eliminated and isolated in the border areas.
At the same time, other European countries did not pay attention to health, and often broke out some large and small diseases. Although the scale is not large, dead people are frequent.
However, other countries are not fools. Although they did not pay as much attention to health as Beihai, they learned how to isolate the disease. For example, several countries around the North Sea, as well as Austria and even France, have learned the isolation method. In this way, even if smallpox and plague appear, most of them are controlled in a certain area without spreading.
Due to strict sanitation management, the possibility of the seafarers in the North Sea carrying the disease is very low. Because, in each port, Marin will set up hospitals, prohibiting sick sailors from running around.
As a result, the probability that the Taino people on the undersea island will contract smallpox many times is very low. Such a large population can also be used by Marin. The only trouble is that so many people will be more troublesome if they are quarantined and checked for syphilis infection.
After all, that's one million people! Even one million pigs can be very troublesome to catch. Fortunately, it is said that the people on the island are divided into five major tribes, and the population is relatively concentrated. They all live in large, densely populated villages, catch birds and fish, and cultivate with stone axe and wooden shovel, mainly planting cassava and sweet potato. The sweet potatoes that Columbus brought back to Europe were obtained from local villages.
Obviously, the cultivation of the extremely high-yield crops such as sweet potatoes makes the Taino people without shortage of food. After all, sweet potatoes are so high-yield, even if the cultivation techniques are poor, the yield per mu is hundreds of kilograms. Therefore, the population of the island will generally soar to millions.
The Indians in the North American jungle are different. They do not have the domineering food such as sweet potatoes, only the maize is not high. Therefore, the entire area of the North American continent, old and beautiful, is not as large as the Taino people on Haiti.
No way, this is how the high-yield food is hanging! There are only 250,000 people on the island of Ireland. However, after the introduction of potatoes, the population once skyrocketed to 7-8 million people. Of course, because of the potato blight, millions of people were killed in one blow.
...
However, because of the habit of growing cassava and sweet potatoes, the Taino people like to live in large villages. Moreover, I like to live in the plains along the coast. After all, farming must be convenient where the plains are near the river.
In this way, it gave Marin the convenience of using force against them. After all, it is much simpler to enclose several villages on a farmland-covered plain than to go into the mountains to find pure savages.
Of course, Marin did not want to embarrass them, but only wanted to eliminate the source of syphilis! The island of Haiti is the source of syphilis, and the private life of the locals must be chaotic. Therefore, Marin needs to send people to observe and isolate it to eliminate syphilis. Without the trouble of syphilis, Haiti Island and the 1 million people on the island have the value of development and utilization. Otherwise, this is a terrifying place.
At present, the main cities on the undersea island are several abandoned Spanish castles and ports such as Santo Domingo, Santiago and Puerto Plata.
Among them, Santo Domingo is the most valuable. This was the first fortress and port city built by the Spanish on the island, and the first colonial city in the Americas.
It is also the capital of the Dominican Republic in later generations and the most developed place on the island of Haiti in later generations. Of course, there is a very important point-there are gold mines nearby!
There is a gold mine near Santo Domingo, but it does not seem to be big, just a small gold mine. The local indigenous people dig for gold in the nearby rivers to obtain gold sand, but the output is not large. Otherwise, the Spaniards will not give up easily.
In fact, there must be gold mines on the island of Haiti, and not too few. However, the scale will not be large. Marin vaguely remembered the relevant introductions of the geography books he read in future generations. It seems that the future generation of Dominica produces 400,000 ounces of gold every year! That is more than 11 tons. The annual output of silver is more than 2 million ounces, which is more than 50 tons.
However, the information says that the gold and silver mines seem to be mostly in the Rosario area ...
But ~ www.wuxiaspot.com ~ Marin doesn't remember that Dominica has a big city called Rosario, but Argentina has a Rosario ...
In fact, Marin did not know that the Rosario district is in the coastal Azua region, not far west of Santo Domingo, and not far from the sea.
Of course, if the gold mine there was discovered early, the Spaniards would never evacuate Haiti. At least, the Rosario gold mine had to be mined before leaving. And the gold mine near Santo Domingo, because the output is very small, Spanish talents are willing to give up.
As long as the gold and silver mines in the legends of later generations are found, the cost of Marin's occupation of Haiti can be recovered and it will be very profitable. Of course, growing tobacco will never lose money.
Moreover, there appear to be copper and nickel mines on the island, and the scale of nickel mines seems to be not small. In later generations, Cuba Island produced several million tons of nickel ore annually, while Dominica also has an annual output of tens of thousands of tons of nickel ore.
In addition, there are abundant bauxite on the island. Of course, bauxite is temporarily useless. Because bauxite cannot be smelted by ordinary methods, it must be electrolytically reduced. Moreover, it is still under cryolite environment. It's no problem to get electricity, but cryolite is said to be synthetic ... well, Marin doesn't understand ...
