"This leather is not good. Look, here... here... there are many holes." In a shop on Hexi Township Street, an old master picked up the lion skin sent by the customer, and carefully evaluated it while looking at it. He only heard him say, "This leather can only give you five dollars, no more."

The young man who sent the skin to sell it sighed disappointed when he heard this and said helplessly: "Master Jiang, look, this is the skin of a cougar, not a broken ostrich skin or a cow and sheep skin. Five dollars is too little, please add some more for me."

"No more than a penny." Master Jiang threw the skin on the counter and said impatiently: "You are covered with holes, and my store will buy it as appropriate. In the future, we have to find a skilled craftsman to find a way to clean it up. It's not a big deal? Besides, the skin of the mountain lion is not a rare product. Last year, a thousand pieces were produced a year on the East Coast Prairie, and they were all of them of good quality. The market supply is still very sufficient, so why should you sell it at a high price?"

"But it can't be only five dollars, right?" The young man was still dissatisfied.

"Young man, let's improve your hunting level. There are many cougars on the prairie of Chaco. Last time I went to the Spanish city of Resistensia to purchase goods, I encountered cougars along the way, and there were traces of cougars grinding their claws on almost every tree along the way. It can be seen that the number of lions is still very large. You should polish more grinding techniques. If you get more level, you will definitely get rich in the future." Master Jiang shook his head and said firmly: "But in front of you, this skin is worth five yuan. Do you like to sell it?"

In fact, from a certain perspective, what Master Jiang said is not a lie. The animal, a mountain lion, is still widely distributed on the east coast, and is very large in number. In terms of the large East Coast grassland with a large population and rapid development, human activities are increasingly eroding the animal's territory. The original ecosystem on the grassland collapsed, and the large number of mountain lions began to be hunted by people on the east coast. The number of skins produced every year is very large, about a few hundred pictures.

In addition to the eastern prairie, the duck lake, Pampa and the southern cone also produce many cougar skins, which may be as many as 2,000. Although it is not as good as Buenos Aires exporting more than 3,000 cougar skins every year in the 18th century in later history, it is also very considerable and a huge fortune.

Of course, some zoology and botanists in the East Coast have jointly petitioned the Ministry of Agriculture to revoke the licenses of some hunters to reduce the number of hunting clowns. They believe that clowns are a key link in the biological chain system and are absolutely indispensable. Although the stock was huge before, after so many years of hunting, the number has dropped to an acceptable level. Now it is time to restrict the indiscriminate hunting and killing.

Therefore, these zoologists unanimously demanded to recover some of the overly flooded puma hunting licenses issued in previous years, and to count the existing puma and protect it in sparse areas to prevent people from extinction in ignorance. These people also cited the example of European bison, believing that the number of animals that were once everywhere had dropped to a dangerous level and that if they lasted for a few decades, they might become extinct.

The Ministry of Agriculture carefully considered the opinions of these people and finally decided to recover some of the licenses in the two places of Duck Lake and the East Coast Prairie, but did not intend to recover them all. These two places are the most developed areas on the East Coast, gathering most of the population, industrial facilities and industrial and commercial enterprises, and the expansion of human activities will only become faster and faster. It is inappropriate to reclaim all licenses to establish nature reserves. In the Patagonian platform, where the ecosystem is relatively fragile, the Ministry of Agriculture intends to recover most of the licenses to prevent the ecosystem from columbs from being hunted by a large number of people.

Some people may say, why do people in the East Coast hunt so many cougars? Has their pursuit of leather reached a "pathological" level? Well, maybe it's a bit "pathological", but people in the East Coast really love leather too much.

The annual consumption is astronomical. From civilian clothing, luggage, industrial conveyor belts, to various types of skins, water bags, ammunition bags, leather hats, armed belts, etc., the industry scale is very large. From beginning to end, the entire industrial chain has supported thousands of workers, which is very amazing.

Taking clothing as an example, the increasingly wealthy East Coast people love warm leather jackets very much. When non-national labor workers were still saving money to buy cotton coats, windproof and cold protection, warm leather coats had become the standard for the East Coast middle class. Designers, cobblers and tailors who immigrated from the old mainland produced beaver leather or bear leather hats, seal or lion leather coats, whale leather waterproof (coldproof) sleeves, etc. day and night to supply the increasingly crazy consumer market.

Therefore, in this case, a large number of East Coast hunters went to various places to hunt puma, crocodiles and various sea beasts, which seemed very common. Especially in the Chaco Plain, which nominally belongs to the territory of the Kingdom of Spain, the East Coast law is not under control for the time being. Therefore, all kinds of licensed and unlicensed people rushed here in a swamp to hunt large animals, mainly cluttered and lioned, and sometimes they would kill some crocodiles or large pythons in the swamp area, thinking that the women's exquisite leather bags were provided with raw materials, but few were not systematically - injecting new impetus into the developed leather industry on the east coast.

The Chaco Plain means "hunting country" in Quechua. It has abundant animal resources and a large number of cougars. Therefore, the hunters who flocked to the east coast are so happy that they can't stop. They use their own means to accept the gift given to them by the Heavenly Lord. In order to purchase these raw materials nearby, many fur shops also opened branches in Hexi Township and other places. Therefore, this is the scene at the beginning of this chapter, where hunters and merchants bargain for the quality and price of leather.

Such a large-scale influx of hunters - according to incomplete civilian blows, the total number may be close to one thousand people, with professionals and business, and many - the Spanish are not blind, so they naturally learned it through various channels. However, it is surprising but also expected that the Spanish colonial government chose to forgive the East Coast people - well, it was chosen to ignore the influx of East Coast hunters. This is actually an "old problem" of the Spanish. They can't beat the East Coast people, and they can't take serious measures to punish these lawless East Coast crossers. So why bother to make yourself uncomfortable? It's better to turn a blind eye. Anyway, the East Coast people are also very good at being human, and occasionally give them some money and bribes, which is enough!

The Spanish colonial government ignored these matters and suddenly made the indigenous Quechuas who had surrendered to them sit on wax. The Spanish colonists could pretend that they were invisible, but they could not! The Chaco Plain is their home, and a considerable number of them make a living by hunting. Now the well-equipped and enthusiastic East Coast hunters broke in and snatched their prey on a large scale. This has seriously affected their survival. How can they not be angry?

What's more, the previous series of cross-border reclamation activities by people on the west bank of the Paraguay River have seized the livelihood of some of the Quechuas who make a living by farming, leaving them without food and clothing, and have also killed and injured many people. The vicious attitude is fully demonstrated. Can you still expect the Quechuas to retreat and tolerate?

As a result, fierce armed conflict broke out between the hunters on the East Coast and the Quechuas. Especially in the past year, the conflict began to become extremely bloody and cruel, so that the State Intelligence Administration and the Military Police Command could no longer sit still. They began to secretly send capable personnel to infiltrate the hunters group, slowly seized dominance, and began to formulate more effective attack measures against the Quechuas to effectively protect the interests of the East Coast.

In addition, several settlements that had been cultivated on the west bank of the Paraguay River for almost two years were also received by the dual orders of the General Administration of Development and the Ministry of the Army to organize manpower and carry weapons to move towards more inland areas. On the one hand, it cracked down on the stubborn Quechua people, and on the other hand, it established new settlements to compress the living space of these indigenous people.

Officials of the General Administration of Development of the State Administration of Development had a sense of urgency when formulating this plan. They judged that the situation in Europe might change drastically in the next few years. The ready-to-go the Kingdom of France might launch an aggressive war against its neighbors, and the Kingdom of Spain might be involved in a terrible war again. Then at that time, it would be a good time for the Eastern Coast Republic to seize the Spanish land. They speculated that the Executive Committee's guilds seized this opportunity to completely take over the fertile Pampa Plain east of the Salt-Brail Railway, and would also make territorial claims in the Central Valley of Chile and the Chaco Plain.

There are now about 200,000 East Coast immigrants east of the Pampa Plain, and many settlements have been established, including roads, railways and other facilities, and government agencies are relatively complete, which is basically no different from the local ones. The Spaniards have long been mentally prepared for the loss of this land. If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sends people to discuss, the problem should not be big.

The same applies to the southern part of Chile's Central Valley. The East Coast people exiled many prisoners there and moved some immigrants, and the land was still rented, so it was not very difficult to deal with. As long as they were a little economically relaxed, the Spanish, who were extremely short of money, would be half-stop, and signed a new agreement with the East Coast government to sell the land at a good price.

But compared with the above two, the Chaco Plain is much more complicated. The East Coast people entered this land very late and their strength was not very strong. Moreover, the Spaniards attached great importance to it and would not make concessions easily. Therefore, it would be a bit difficult to sign an agreement with them in the future. Therefore, officials of the State Administration of Intelligence believe that it is necessary to work hard in advance and create chaos in the area, making the Spaniards feel that it is not worth the effort to keep this land, and force them to make concessions and eventually sell the entire Chaco Plain to the East Coast people.
Chapter completed!