Chapter 26 Beautiful Scenery at the Foot of Babao Mountain
The green color not far away immediately confirmed Luo Chong's guess. It was the color of malachite, and malachite was the symbol of copper mines.
In fact, anyone who has studied junior high school chemistry should know that copper sulfate solution is green, so most green stones contain copper, including jade.
China's Yunnan and Myanmar are rich in jade, precisely because there is an acidic volcano there, the Tengchong volcano in Yunnan. When the volcano erupts, the copper sulfate solution in the center of the earth erupts along with the magma. After tens of thousands of years, it invades the stone and becomes jade.
Therefore, if you have more money, you can buy a piece of jade, smash it and burn it, and you can also refine copper, but unfortunately no one does that.
Digging a little further to the side, a lot of blue-purple azurite came out, which is the natural crystal of copper sulfide, a layer of indigo, a layer of dark blue, and a layer of blue-purple, precipitating crystals radially, very beautiful, like a blue Ganoderma lucidum with circles of lines.
After crossing a small hill, the view turned into a large expanse of white. Luo Chong dug around for a long time. The white mineral veins were very mixed. Most of the surface layer was Guanyin soil, which was dolomite, also known as kaolin, a refractory clay, mainly used to burn porcelain or make crucibles for melting metal.
Kaolin was mixed with lime, and there was lime when digging further down. There was also white translucent mica. At the bottom, there was chalk and Iceland spar, which was calcite. The colorless and transparent cubes that looked like rock sugar were Iceland spar, and the squares were pure white and opaque and harder were chalk. In fact, these things were all lime, but because they were buried deeper and were under greater pressure, they became variants of lime.
After crossing the ridge of Babaoshan, there was only gray granite left, and tin ore coexisting next to the granite, which could be seen from the silver metal reflection seeping out of the surface of the granite.
After digging around for most of the day, Luo Chong lay on a piece of granite on the east side of Babao Mountain. The granite was very warm in the sun. Wu Da and Ximen led the herd of horse antelopes to eat the low shrubs around them, while Luo Chong thanked the geology and chemistry professors of the National Defense University in his heart. He thanked them for teaching him so many things, otherwise he would not know how to use them even if he had a treasure mountain.
Summarizing the situation of today's exploration, this is a rich copper mine, and other minerals are just associated minerals of copper mines.
However, those associated minerals are also useful. Tin can be made into copper-tin alloy with copper, which is the famous bronze. At present, bronze is the best metal that Luo Chong can get.
In fact, bronze alloys have been widely used in modern times. They are generally used to make bearings for machines, but most people don't know it. They think that bronze should appear in the ancient tomb of a king, but it is not the case. Bronze alloys are indeed better than steel in some aspects, so even after thousands of years, they have not been eliminated.
When Qin Shihuang unified the six kingdoms, the Qin army used bronze weapons, while the six kingdoms were already equipped with a lot of iron weapons. However, the early iron weapons could not compare with the mature bronze weapons, so the six kingdoms did not lose unfairly.
Iron weapons completely replaced bronze weapons in the Han Dynasty. At that time, the early steelmaking technology was relatively mature, and the iron materials that were folded and forged continuously were indeed sharper than bronze.
However, the use of bronze was not eliminated because of the prosperity of steel. Until the Ming and Qing Dynasties, bronze was still used to make firearms. Most of the fire guns and red cannons of the Daming Shenjiying were cast in bronze.
There is very little iron sulfide in Babaoshan, which is not enough to support iron smelting, so Luo Chong can only go to the end with bronze in the future.
Fortunately, Babao Mountain is not far from his tribe. It takes only three days to walk there, and six days to go back and forth. If blue antelopes are used to pull carts, the time should be much faster. Blue antelopes are as big as donkeys, so it should be no problem to pull a cart. If it really doesn't work, then two antelopes can pull a cart, and they just need to build a bridge when they go back.
Having made plans for the future, Luo Chong also has time to appreciate the surrounding scenery. Babao Mountain looks beautiful from a distance, and it makes people feel excited when they see it up close. How can a place full of copper not make people happy?
The east side of Babao Mountain has a well-developed water system, which is an endless wetland swamp that you can't see the end of at a glance. At the foot of the mountain, the water grass is lush, and Wu Da and Ximen are happily leading the antelopes to graze.
Wetlands are land covered by shallow water all year round, with the deepest water level not exceeding two meters. They are a paradise for animals and plants, among which water birds are the most.
This place is no exception. Knee-high ryegrass and waist-high alfalfa, also known as four-leaf clover, are so recognizable. Four heart-shaped leaves grow together, which is called lucky grass in modern times. Many decorations often have four-leaf clover shapes. They are the favorites of various herbivores and little girls, because they are heart-shaped.
There are clumps of tall and straight reeds and sweet elephant grass that grow as tall as trees, each of which is six or seven meters high. In the wetland grassland at the foot of this mountain, Luo Chong also saw a herd of horses, but he was not interested in catching them at all.
The horses here are only as tall as his waist, not as big as sheep. They can't pull carts or ride. Their skins are not good-looking and they are not warm. It is not cost-effective to raise them for meat because they grow too slowly. For Luo Chong, they are useless.
There are no goats or sheep here. Blue antelopes are not rare. There are three or four small groups of more than ten. Luo Chong hopes that Wuda and Ximen can fight for their strength and bring back some female antelopes.
There are also beavers the same size as domestic pigs in the bushes, with shiny brown fur, appearing and disappearing in the water grass.
There are also large snake skins hanging on the mangroves. Damn, the shed snake skin alone is more than ten meters long, as thick as a child's waist. Tsk tsk, don't meet a living one, otherwise you really can't beat it, Luo Chong complained in his heart. Luo
Chong accepted the python's snake slough without hesitation. He was worried about not having a bag or something like that. He
wanted the bag to hold grass seeds, ryegrass, sweet elephant grass, wild alfalfa, broad-leaved water leek and water celery. He could take some home to fry eggs and meat slices, or something, and supplement vitamins appropriately.
Of course, he couldn't just eat for himself. He had to develop his own rabbit breeding business in the future, and there were blue antelopes. He would rely on them to pull carts in the future. Luo Chong didn't mind being nice to them. The open space in front of the tribe's cave was just right for growing these grasses.
After half an afternoon, Luo Chong was so tired that his back and waist ached. He finally collected a bag of grass seeds. He did not sort them, but mixed them all together and tied them to the back of a female antelope.
The blue antelope ate to his heart's content, and Luo Chong also shot his dinner, an ancient giant goose, with white fur, white overall, and mixed feathers and head. It was more than two meters tall, one size larger than the modern red-crowned crane, with a wingspan of more than five meters. Luo Chong shot it twice before it fell down from the bushes.
Luo Chong plucked all the feathers that could be used as arrows, and cut it open. Luo Chong planned to roast it whole to supplement the dried rabbit meat in his backpack.
When Luo Chong squatted on the bank to slaughter the goose, he suddenly burst into tears. The tears rolled around in his eyes for several times, and finally he couldn't help but let them flow out. The hot tears were all about his longing for the earth.
People who have slaughtered chickens know that chickens have a weak digestive system, and the food they eat will remain in their stomachs for a long time. In the TV series, Kangxi once asked the imperial chef to make him a bowl of bran, but there was no such thing in the palace. It was the food for chickens. In the end, they had to kill the chickens and take the bran from their stomachs. This shows the digestive system of chickens.
In fact, the situation is similar for other birds. For example, this ancient giant goose. Luo Chong actually found small fish
and shrimps in its stomach, as well as rice that had not been digested in time. Thanks to "Pujin Book Friends" for the reward. Thank you for your support. Thank you also to all the big pots and small changes who voted for recommendations. There are a lot of recommendations today. Thank you for your support. I hope that everyone will continue to work hard tomorrow to get more and more recommendations. Qingshu will also work hard to write this book for everyone. In the past two days, book friends have made many valuable suggestions. As a new author, Qingshu does have some inconsiderate ideas. I will correct them in the future and strive to learn while writing books. Thank you everyone.
(End of this chapter)
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