20th May 1574"This is where I want the market to be built. Considering how the distance from the city is relatively short, it won"t be that hard to manage it, and maybe in the future, those two places could connect."
When I first thought about creating a road, it was supposed to connect Tarnow to Pilzno and later extend to Ropian, the town I took over from Bart and had yet to visit in either of my lives, current or past one in the modern times. Yet with the changes to the plans and ongoing expansion of my projects, the potential profits from the market were simply too great to not take the first spot on my priority list!
"I can"t say, this seems to be quite a reasonable choice. The question is, how big are you going to make it? To be frank, from what I understood, if you attempt to make it a proper, bricked or concrete area, then building the road itself will have to be pushed for later. After all, while those s.h.i.+ps are great and all, it still takes some time for them to travel all this distance, not to speak about the need to build the outpost at the border as well!"
Standing in the middle of what was now farm fields sprawling on both sides of the river, I could already see how the entire area would turn into a bustling trade market, with the incoming wares all stocked on the one side of the river, while the outgoing import traded on the other side.
While the fact that some of the people currently living here would have to be relocated to another place could potentially be troublesome, it was a step that had to be taken. After all, I couldn"t let the habits of few stand in the way of the progress of many!
"It"s all about time. It will take time to build the border outpost. It will take time to promote the new ruling about customs and it will take time for the merchants to learn about it and gather. All this time can be used to increase the number of the boats that will swim between the future market and the outpost, and every s.h.i.+p that will come out of the production line in the Mining Town will carry as much of the cement or wooden products as its capable of lifting."
All in all, I couldn"t help but smile when all my projects were finally reaching the point where they could influence my own lands in a realistic way. But while I could be happy at the notion itself, just thinking about it wouldn"t push any of the matters forward at all!
"Anyway, we need to go to Tarnow first. I need to have a talk with my econom to make her do the proper arrangements. But first, I think there is still one thing that we need to show you. Thankfully, we have enough manpower to do it. Men, gather up!"
Jumping off from the board of the s.h.i.+p directly into the relatively shallow water I quickly reached the sh.o.r.e. With the few workers that I poached from the mining town already busying themselves with moving some of the few materials outside of the concrete that I ordered them to bring along with us, it would take us only a moment before the example I wanted to show to Nataniel would be finished.
"While for now, we are doing everything by hand, keep in mind that as soon as I will find some time, I will try to come up with a machine that could allow us to speed up the most time-consuming part of the process. Anyway, at first, we dig down about a meter deep."
With just a simple gesture, the workers dropped everything they were currently carrying onto the small stockpile and grabbed the few shovels that were available before stabbing them brutally in the earth.
While the task could seem like something that could take a while, digging up a cube one meter long, wide and high took them only a few minutes. In fact, evening out the sides of this strange trench took them longer than digging it out itself!
"Now that we have a proper trench, we start with huge rocks. Men, fill three-quarters of the hole with the big filler!"
Rather than using normal terms like huge rocks, gravel or sand when referring to those objects, I forced everyone to use specific terms like big, medium and small filler. Even though it didn"t have that much meaning in itself, I couldn"t exclude the option that someone would either force me to sell or simply steal the cement of mine. That"s why, by using the specific terms for simple things, I could confuse my potential rivals into thinking that those common items were in fact something else entirely!
"Sir, yes sir!"
Those huge rocks that I hauled on the s.h.i.+p all the way from the Mining Town were nothing else but elements that were leftover on the belt in my Cement plant when I ordered a routine checkup on all the machines to control whether they were all working properly! Just like all the other elements that we bring for the sake of making the example, they were nothing more but a sc.r.a.p from this plant!
"As soon, as three-quarters of the trench are filled with big filler, we will be adding wet medium filler. It will serve the purpose of preventing the cement ma.s.s from reaching that deep. After all, when the water will sink through the earth and reach that part of the road, if it were to turn into ice during winter, if there won"t be enough free s.p.a.ce for it to spread, the entire road would simply break apart!"
This was one element of laying the road that I was sure about. Unless I could completely isolate the entire thing from the influence of water, I had to account for its unstoppable power! Just like I managed to shackle it in my steam engines, mother nature would be sure to pay me back for using her forces if I wasn"t careful!"
"Now, the remaining s.p.a.ce will be filled with a thin layer of cement plaster, small filler, cement plaster and so on, all the way to the point where we will use small concrete bricks to make up the surface of the road. This will allow us to make sure it will be as even as possible while making it st.u.r.dy enough by filling the gaps with the cement ma.s.s."
By the time I finished explaining as we observed how the workers diligently poured the gravel from the bags brought from the s.h.i.+ps, one of the sailors brough a few simple chairs from the s.h.i.+p while another one supplied us with the very last barrel of my beer and a set of cups. Considering how reaching Tarnow would take us less than an hour on the horseback, there was no point in trying to h.o.a.rd this drink any longer.
"Now, all that"s left for us is to wait."
No matter how fast those workers could work, we were still limited by the time the cement required to properly dry up. Even though making such thin layers like the one the workers laid out would hasten the process, it would still take about half an hour for each of the layers to properly dry up!