On May 20, 1640, even in the dry season, it would still rain in the humid and hot area of ​​northeastern Madagascar. This is the case today. An unexpected thunderstorm in the afternoon drove all the Eight Banners slaves working in the construction site and the forest back to their tents. Some supervisors and soldiers shouted with whips and asked them to hang the gauze nets on the doors and windows so that they would not let mosquitoes run in.

In the past two days, several Eight Banners slaves have had malaria symptoms such as periodic chills, coldness, and sweating, which made everyone feel a little scared. They should have been bitten by mosquitoes within one or two days after landing, causing malaria to be infected with. After a certain incubation period, the malaria parasites have begun to develop the disease. Seeing the pain of these people when they started, everyone felt sad.

As the temporary highest commander of the camp, Taoist Shou placed all the people who had been sick in an empty wooden house, and sent several people to take care of them and monitor them, trying to give them the best food and living place. Without the use of medication, these people were basically helpless. Taoist Shou, as a Taoist who travels around the world, also has superficial medical skills and still has a deep sense of awe for things like "miasma".

Although the iron cabinet in his room contained several packets of precious cinchona tree bark powder, these drugs, which were priced as gold, were not used to treat slaves. Even ordinary soldiers were sick and had difficulty getting treatment unless they were licensed. These drugs were prepared for managers, technicians, officers and senior non-commissioned officers. If others were sick, they would leave it to fate.

Except for some of these infected slaves who are very vital, in good health and strong immunity, who may survive, other Taoist priests of the life expectancy are not optimistic about their survival. Maybe they will die after several attacks. Now they are sent to take care of them to calm the hearts of those slaves. They will not be too low and thus affect their work efficiency.

This thunderstorm looks quite small. Raindrops as big as beans fall densely from the sky. The surroundings are white and you can't see a few meters away. Taoist Shou is a little worried. The stream a few hundred meters away from the camp is fine on weekdays, and the water volume is just average. However, with such heavy rain now, the water volume will definitely increase sharply after a period of time. I hope that it will not affect the goodness here. This is the rivers in these tropical areas, with short and surging water flows. Fortunately, it is easy to explode once it rains heavily.

However, the Anziranana area is currently in the dry season, with monthly precipitation of only a few dozen millimeters, which will not cause any major disasters. However, you should be careful when the rainy season begins in November. At that time, there will be a few hundred millimeters of rainfall every month, comparable to the precipitation of the Cape Town area for a whole year. Moreover, for several consecutive months, floods may occur. Therefore, if you want to live in this place, you must do a good job of water conservancy facilities.

"Mr. Pesonin, this thunderstorm will probably fall until evening." Taoist Shou stood under the eaves of the only brick house in the camp. Looking at the vast rain and fog outside, he said: "I think that river really needs to be transformed. Chief Li Yi said before leaving that it is suitable to be transformed into an artificial reservoir. I think this is correct. We should do this, otherwise the surging river water will probably rush out of the river when the rainy season comes, causing us great trouble."

"Please call me Pei Suoning, thank you. I have a surname, my surname is Pei." Pei Suoning, a former Finnish young man, corrected the words of Taoist Shou a little, and then said: "Abstract, your suggestions are indeed very pertinent, but I think this is not our top priority now."

"Of course this is not our top priority now, I'm talking about the future." Taoist Shou laughed and said, "What we need now is to build more brick and tiles and a docking and unloading pier for the fleet to arrive next time. Oh, by the way, we also need to build a flat pavement that can be used for carriages."

"Houses are the most important." Pei Suoning looked up at the roof and said with satisfaction: "Look at this brick and tile house. The architectural design of the water town area in southern China is simple in structure and fast in construction. The tiles can drain rainwater under the eaves as quickly as possible, keeping the house dry. It only takes less than 10,000 red bricks, some tiles and a wooden beam to build such a house. Chief Shou, I think we need more such houses. There is only one set and three rooms now, which is far from enough. Look at those pine wood boarded houses, it rains heavily outside and light inside, and the environment is really bad. If it takes a long time, everyone will easily get sick."

"There are only less than 100,000 bricks in total, and there are not many cement, lime, and wood. We currently need to build too many projects. If we transport building materials from the local area, the transportation capacity is not enough. This is really difficult." Taoist Shou wiped a handful of rain on his face and said, "It is best to burn bricks locally. If this can be achieved, then our construction progress will be much faster. After all, it is time-consuming and laborious to transport from the local area, and it is not economical. Moreover, transporting something so little is not enough. It's a pity that I can't...

"I can't do anything?" Pessonin interrupted Taoist Shou with a smile, and then said, "Don't worry, Company Commander Shou. I have carefully surveyed the area within a few kilometers these days. Didn't you find that this is a typical karst karst terrain?"

"Ka...Ka, what?" Taoist Shou asked awkwardly. His cultural level is not high, and he can only barely recognize more than 200 words at present, so he has always respected Pei Suoning, a "cultural person".

"It's karst terrain." Pei Suoning explained: "To put it simply, this terrain is generally rich in a large amount of limestone, marble, gypsum, clay, bauxite, rock salt and other minerals. Among them, limestone and marble are important raw materials for burning limes and cement, and clay is the raw material for burning bricks and tiles. So, what you said is that it is completely feasible to produce these building materials locally, and it is very suitable because the local raw materials are too rich."

"Is that true?" Taoist Shou was a little excited. This was a great thing. "Lao Pei, do you know the technique of burning bricks and cement? If you know, we will start working in the near future. Nothing else is as important as this. With a large number of building materials, we can easily access it here."

"Of course I understand." Pei Suoning smiled. At first, he worked in a brick and tile factory for a while. "In fact, it's not just me. Some soldiers from the 101st Company are workers from Dongfanggang Building Materials Company, and the least of them has been working for three or four years. However, the Government Department has replaced them with slave workers in the past two years, but I think their old business must have not been abandoned. You can organize them and then start to find a way to set up the brick kiln when the rain stops tomorrow. It happened that a batch of refractory bricks were transported over the previous time. They were originally going to be used elsewhere, but now they are just here to build the kiln."

The heavy rain stopped that night. The next morning, Taoist Shou led his people to the area by the stream to check the water situation. The stream after the rain was a little turbid and the water flowed very fast, but the water level did not overflow the river bank. Most of the rain rushed into the bay along the river channel, which made Taoist Shou breathe a sigh of relief. This was really good news.

Of course, there is no bad news. Last night, several slaves started to slap their bodies, and have now been transferred to resettlement houses to settle on the spot. So far, 11 of the 300 slaves have been infected with malaria. In addition, a considerable number of slaves should have been infected with malaria, but they are still in the incubation period.

It's a headache! Taoist Shou was really depressed. He had done everything to the extreme. Unexpectedly, there were still so many people who were infected. What should we do? Alas, we can only continue to strengthen mosquito prevention education. Yesterday he asked those people who had malaria, which were basically caused by mosquito bites on the first day. They were working in the woods, and because the weather was stuffy, they secretly untied their collars and headscarves, leaving a large amount of skin naked, resulting in mosquito bites. It seems that stricter measures will be implemented in the future, and these slaves must develop good habits of not exposing their skin in mosquito breeding sites.

To get rid of these troublesome things, Taoist Shou selected 100 strong Xhosa blacks from the slaves, and then brought 10 Eight Banners supervisors and 16 101st Company soldiers with tools and weapons toward the clay land chosen by Pei Suoning.

It is about one kilometer away from the camp, next to it is a vast coconut forest, and the ground is filled with red soil unique to the island of Maison. According to Pei Suoning, the soil here is more sticky and is very suitable for making bricks and burning bricks.

Since the "experts" said so, and his subordinates from a brick factory nodded and agreed to Pei Suoning's opinion, Taoist Shou simply hired people without doubt and authorized the matter directly to Pei Suoning to do it. He was only responsible for providing Pei Suoning with materials and labor, as well as necessary safety warnings.

Pei Suoning was also a practical person. After Taoist Shou handed over the matter to him, he took a hijab and a group of slaves on the spot to clean up the low shrubs here and level the foundations so as to clear out a place where the earth kiln can be built as soon as possible.
Chapter completed!