The first trade between the islands in the southeast of the Star Sea, headed by New Saul Island, and the Northern Islands, headed by Green Island, greatly aroused the enthusiasm of the nobles and lords on Green Island.
Because for this group of nobles who have been struggling on the northern ice fields, this trade is the only good way to make a comeback in a short period of time.
Therefore, spurred by the prospect of a bright future that could benefit generations, the nobles spent their capital one after another to hire professionals from all walks of life to conduct large-scale exploration in the area.
In addition to some of these prospectors coming from the core forces of the lords and nobles, a large number of them were hired by these nobles from outside the island through their personal connections.
Taking into account timeliness, the nobles did not use their own connections in the Old Continent to find people, but directly issued tasks and recruited people from the countries in the New Continent.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Viscount Surrey also made a small profit. Because his territory is located in the middle of Green Island, and it is also the only large-scale human settlement and landing point on this hundreds of kilometers of coastline.
Under this circumstance, Surrey Fort, as the largest distribution center for personnel and materials in this area, naturally formed a large market. With the arrival of various professionals and materials and the passage of time, the exploration work also became more comprehensive.
spread out.
In a short period of time, news of the discovery of new specialties came from almost all territories.
Obviously, after taking the initiative to send professional prospectors, these nobles' reconnaissance results for the entire territory in one or two weeks may exceed those in previous years or even more than ten years. That's why they were able to find a lot of things in such a short period of time.
New specialty.
Soon, samples of those new specialties were sent to Lawrence of Surrey one after another along with survey reports on expected annual production. He then made the final identification to see how many of them could really be used for trade.
Materials.
Taking into account 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 specialties are suitable for use as trade goods, even if they have a certain value.
To take the simplest example, a lord in the north found silver ore with a relatively good content in the mountains of his territory, and stated in the record that the scale of the silver mine was not too small.
Lawrence was a little excited when he first saw the piece of silver ore, because in his impression, the cornerstone of the development of many desolate places that attracted a large number of people was the mining of various precious metal mines.
For example, in Lawrence's impression, in the world of his previous life, there were many cities that had relatively desolate natural environments but developed in the end. And if you look into it carefully, you will find that almost all of them are related to resource extraction.
For example, there are a series of cities in Xianbelia built with the help of coal mines, natural gas mines and even diamond mines, and another example is the series of large port cities in North America that were developed because of gold mines.
However, after carefully reading the investigation report and examining the silver ore samples sent, Lawrence reluctantly rejected the possibility of developing a silver mine.
Because after he comprehensively considered the grade of the silver ore, the scale of the entire silver mine, and the difficulty of mining, he realized that if he wanted to develop this silver mine, the profit would probably be very small, and it would not be impossible to even lose money in the event of an accident.
The reason for this situation is very simple, because the silver mine's reserves 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 farther north than Fort Surrey, and the mountainous area where the mineral is located is filled with ice and snow all year round, so the cost of mining it is huge.
Compared with the high difficulty of mining and the mining cost that far exceeds that of a normal silver mine, the silver ore grade and reserves of this silver mine are not very eye-catching.
Although the grade of these silver ores is considered to be medium to high, according to the clergy of the Mother Earth Church, the amount of silver metal in the entire mining area is only about 300 tons, and the reserves are not large at all.
This silver mine is also associated with lead and zinc mines, but even if more than 10,000 tons of lead and more than 7,000 tons of zinc are added, it is likely that even the money will not be earned.
"Since the staff of the Mother Earth Church said this is not feasible, then why did this lord send this thing?" Looking at the statistics in front of the report card, Lawrence shook his head in confusion.
Because the level of mineral resources and the difficulty of mining in this area have been clearly stated in the first few pages of the report, and 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 why this document was delivered to Lawrence, so after adjusting his mood, he continued to read it.
Sure enough, in the last few pages of this article the lord proposed a solution.
"Construct 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 the railway."
"Anyone who can come up with this idea is either a genius or a madman." After looking at 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, it is actually very necessary to build railways, especially the east-west railway in the north of the island.
Not to mention the huge area of this island, just as one of the sub-arctic islands, Green Island has the same northern ice accumulation phenomenon as these northern islands, allowing 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 existing value.
Because of the ice accumulation problem in the north, it is very difficult for people on the east and west coasts in the northern areas of the island to communicate. If they want to go from the east coast to the west coast, they have only two options:
Either choose to circle the entire island from the south, or you can only choose to use dogs or ponies to pull a sled across the northern wilderness.
Obviously this approach is not conducive to transportation within the island or outside the island. At the same time, because it is too cold and there are no non-seasonal rivers, transportation with the inland is inconvenient. 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 the development of inland areas.
For example, this is the case with the nobleman who proposed the development of the silver mine this time. He is also a viscount. At the same time, because the territory is further north, he has a larger territory.
But from the perspective of territorial value, except for a short stretch of coastline that can be used for fishing and hunting very few otters, this northern territory can be said to be extremely barren.
However, if you want 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 take into account that the areas further north are almost deserted, and it is inconvenient to use the roads after they are built. The permafrost layer in the north alone is a problem that cannot be solved by the current technical level.
Therefore, in order to avoid asking for trouble, normal people would inevitably choose an area as far north as possible geographically, but definitely not one with permafrost that makes it 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 a primer to attract everyone's attention.
In fact, compared to mining a silver mine that is not of great economic significance, the real purpose of this viscount's report is not that.
The reason why he submitted this report was that after exploration, he found that the local terrain was suitable for building a road, so he hoped to persuade others to decide to build a road around his territory that would bring prosperity to the entire territory for a long time.