In the huge whirlpool of criticism, the most powerful person in the world is not the monarch who is better than the monarch. Even his friends who were familiar with him did not know where he went, what he was thinking, or doing. In fact, he now doesn't want anything or do anything. He thinks he has done enough to do this world. He should do something for himself, but he doesn't know what to do for himself.

When he appeared in Panama City, the outside world finally found his trace. Downing, who was living in a quiet place, saw almost no one, lived alone by the canal in Panama City, and looked at the great canal every day. In real history, the Panama Canal has four locks at one end of the Atlantic Ocean, gradually lifting the passing ships by 26 meters so as to pass through Lake Gatung, which is above sea level. When reaching one end of the Pacific Ocean, there are five other large locks, which gradually settle the ships to sea level. Now, with the help of Downing's super machinery, there are not one of these locks that are in trouble. The Atlantic Ocean directly leads to the Pacific Ocean, and the engineering volume has increased several times.

The Panama Canal is almost a microcosm of Downing's influence in this world, and some projects that are so huge that they are almost unimaginable are easily completed under him.

The only guest Downing met in Panama was Connelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the United States, a shipping and railroad tycoon. He also made many achievements in finance and had a strong reputation in the United States. However, the Security Committee believes that this person is at a certain risk because he donated a lot of steam ships to the US government for transformation into warships, and he is a completely pro-American element.

Realizing that the North-South division was inevitable, Vanderbilt began to repair its relationship with the South and inspected the Panama Canal, which happened to be in Panama City when Downing appeared. Before that, Vanderbilt was shocked by the container port being built in New Orleans, realizing that this was another feat for Downing to change the world.

The wealth of the American richest man is not on the same level as Downing's wealth. Downing only needs to pick out any of its dozen industries and can be richer than the American richest man. Not to mention that the East India Company is a multinational military group. Therefore, it is ten times more difficult for Vanderbilt to meet Downing than the US president.

Out of his favor for powerful families, Tang Ning, who was in a sluggish mood, still met Lao Fan. Of course, it is necessary for Lao Fan to be sturdyly searched like Naoki Ii. Lao Fan is very considerate of this security measure, because there are too many people in the world who want "the general backstage of slave traders all over the world".

Vanderbilt had gradually faded out of the shipping industry because he felt that railways had a promising prospect than shipping industry. However, after seeing the construction of container ports and understanding the logic behind them, Vanderbilt quickly foresaw the terrible addition effect of the combination of shipping industry and railways. However, all of this is currently monopolized by the Windsor consortium, and only a few people vaguely feel the power of container transportation, such as the treacherous minister Bismarck, who encouraged Prussia to build a container port in Wilhelmshaven.

Perhaps the only opportunity comes from the North-South confrontation in the United States. At present, Downing has no chance to build his own port in the north, and Vanderbilt has a very good relationship with the Lincoln administration.

When he heard that Vanderbilt had gone to New Orleans, Downing laughed and said, "You still dare to go to the south? It's amazing."

Vanderbilt brought Downing a gift, with a prominent eyeball and a grinning wood-carved statue, said to be a handicraft from the isolated Pacific Polynian Islands, but not the kind that can be found everywhere on the streets. According to archaeological experts, it is quite old and it is an antique.

This is a rare treasure that Vanderbilt had searched for a long time before finding, which may have never seen by knowledgeable Downing. It seems that Downing especially likes isolated islands, such as New Guinea and Hawaii, were directly "collectioned" by Downing.

Tang Ning really liked the wood carving and said, "This is like a product on Easter Island."

Even a rich American in this era must be a generation of heroes, because collusion between officials and businessmen, power-money transactions between congressmen, judges and merchants are common. Even rich people have their territory, where they have strong relationships with courts and congressmen, and they can even find excuses to arrest competitors and sentence them, or ask congressmen to issue bills for profit against competitors. The difference from the Qing Dynasty is that collusion between officials and businessmen is also based on the law. Using the law to fight to the death, lawyers who can speak and argue are of high value. Unlike the Qing Dynasty, where officials are subject to official titles, they have great advantages in the first level of official positions.

Vanderbilt is obviously a hero and does not have any expertise in natural science. Being able to find the rare treasures on this Pacific Island is already his super long performance under the discussion of the think tank, so he can only ask awkwardly, "What is Easter Island?"

Tang Ning immediately called his assistant and ordered: "Take a few photos of this wood carving to Mr. Darwin, ask him to identify it, and let Mr. Darwin pass on the cliff carving pictures of Easter Island, thank you!"

In the following time, Vanderbilt talked about business, hoping to contract the container port in the northern United States that Downing could not build. Downing estimated that Americans would be hostile to him in a short period of time. It was also good to have a northern agent. In principle, he agreed to the business, but said something that the old fox Vanderbilt couldn't understand: "Business is business, and business is not just business. I have many rules for the port that are contrary to making money. I think this may become an obstacle to our cooperation, and you still have to consider it."

In Vanderbilt's doubts, in order to illustrate this issue, Downing happened to take Easter Island as an example, which is the perfect annotation of the tragic ending of human consumerism. The nearest town with a slightly more populous population is an island 2,600 kilometers away, that is, an island with a few hundred people, while the nearest mainland is the border of Chile 3,500 kilometers away.

What makes Easter Island even more difficult to get close to is that it is surrounded by tall cliffs, and despite this, humans came here about 100 AD and flourished. At first, these incredible ancient marine peoples may not have been trapped there, because the island also had lush palm trees that could be used to create wooden boats.

But Easter Island is not large, with only 160 square kilometers, and its population grew rapidly exceeding 10,000. In order to obtain food, the islanders had to cut down forests for cultivation. When the population peaked, all the palm trees on the island were cut down, and the result was that the islanders no longer had the ability to navigate. The population continued to grow, and Malthus's theory of population growth came into effect, and it was at the point where war could solve the problem of who could survive.

The poor islanders turned into shameless opportunist and adventurous people in the endless civil war. When Captain Cook came to the island, they found them extremely poor and in the transaction, an islander robbed Captain Cook's bag of goods. The soldiers fired a shot at the islander. Of course, the broken gun at that time did not hit the robber, but scared him to leave the stolen goods and screamed and fled.

The arrival of Europeans brought various diseases to the islanders. The population of Easter Island dropped again. By the 1860s, it dropped to 3,000 people. What's even more tragic is that Peru's slave traders boarded the island in 1862, that is, last year, to capture slaves, and 1,500 islanders were captured at once. This incident was very sensational at the time. Tang, the general backer of the slave trader, was shot in the incident and was severely condemned.

Vanderbilt noticed that Downing was more dull and even mocked their fate rather than sympathy when describing Easter Island's history.

At this moment, Panama City where Downing is located seems not far from Easter Island. Take out the map and look at it. It is about 5,000 kilometers and the 50-hour flight of the airship. Let's see these islanders who have miserable fates and are abandoned by their gods.

Tangning, who was so happy about anything, finally found another thing that he was reluctant to do, thanks to Vanderbilt, so Tangning casually said to him: "I want to go to Easter Island, are you going?"

This is a good opportunity to have a good relationship with the big boss. Vanderbilt is happy to go there, although he doesn't understand what a broken island looks like.

They left Panama and headed to the southeast of the Pacific Ocean. After more than 50 hours of flight, they arrived at Easter Island at night. Under the dim moonlight, they visited hundreds of famous cliff carvings. The huge and mysterious carvings made Vanderbilt, who was in the business of the brain, also moved.

In order to see more clearly, Tang Ning ordered the airship to drop flares, and the flames of aluminum and magnesium burning at a height of 1,000 meters illuminated the entire island, scaring the islanders who were unknown to the truth.

Although the incendiary bomb is very bright, it is not sunlight after all. The huge stone statue is obviously even more strange under such strange light. Vanderbilt finally saw the face of the stone carving and said in surprise: "It really looks very similar to that wood carving!"

Tangning: "The large stone statues weigh 5,60 tons, and Europeans believed that only giants could carve and carry them."

Vanderbilt: "What about you?"

Tang Ningshu said: "As long as you have basic engineering knowledge, you can easily move 60 tons of stones with some rolling wood. Even if there is no rolling wood, hundreds of people can drag it. Giants are nonsense. There are also those marks, because the stones are weathered and very crisp, I can use another stone to mark the marks on it with one hand."

Vanderbilt said respectfully: "You are a great engineer, and I believe you say you can move these stones with one hand."

Tangning laughed.

They camped next to the stone carvings. In the morning, they went to observe the stone carvings. It seemed that all the mystery and weirdness had disappeared, leaving only a thousand years of thought of the world.

Vanderbilt noticed that many stone statues were pushed down and asked for explanation.

Tang Ning said: "Maybe it was pushed down by the enemy during the civil war. These stone statues have no ghosts and gods, so they should be worshipping ancestors. Pushing down stone statues is what the islanders think can eliminate the protection of ancestors from the enemy. Now, all the trees on the island have been cut down, and there are no rolling trees available for the islanders, and there seems to be no new stone statues born. This belief in the ancestors has collapsed, and the gods cannot protect their descendants who have no resources."

Vanderbilt nodded frequently, it seemed that there was no phenomenon in this world that Master Tang could not explain.

At this time, Darwin's assistant sent the results of Darwin's research together with naturalists. The wood carving that Vanderbilt gave to Darning looked exactly the same as one of the group of wood carvings depicted by Captain Cook's painter, and even the number of ribs was the same. It can be confirmed that this wood carving originated from Captain Cook's transaction. The captain had a Polynesian translation. It is very likely that the captain did not take the wood carving to heart at the time and gave it to the Polynesians. Finally, it was transferred to the hands of American sailors and flowed into the United States.

It seems that all this is clear. When Captain Cook came to Easter Island, the poor islanders hurriedly exchanged lost wood carvings that they thought were valuable for items. Although Captain Cook looked down on these wood carvings, they were truly out of print. The wood used for carving is a unique variety that grew on Easter Island. The wood is dense, which is conducive to carving and has long been extinct.

They went to visit the market of Rapanui people. After the invasion of Peruvian slave traders, the islanders here were only the elderly, weak, sick and disabled, and the market was extremely declining. When the islanders saw the foreigners, they all looked at them with creepy resentment.

Vanderbilt was very uneasy at the eyes of the islanders, but found that Downing was so peaceful that there was even a hint of cold mockery at the corner of his mouth. In the end, the resentful islanders did not dare to do anything. The guards were holding the Black Contractor assault rifles and were ready for battle. No one of the islanders recognized what weapon it was, but their appearance scared them.

Vanderbilt counted these islanders from the air, believing that the number of people on the island is less than 300, and they are old, weak, sick and disabled. If no one helps, this nation is likely to die in a few years.

"Yes." Tang Ning responded lightly.

The great philanthropist likes to do something good everywhere, but this time, he does nothing.
Chapter completed!