Chapter 542: Great Discovery in Hydrological Reconnaissance (Please vote and subscribe)
The issue of firearms cannot be resolved in a short time. This is a huge topic. Even Luo Chong has not yet decided whether to do it or not, and what impact it will have on the future development of civilization.
If we see the power of firearms and let ambitious people have it, it will definitely be a disaster for this world.
However, the population of this world is still in an extremely low state. Luo Chong’s only long-term goal at present is to do his best to develop the population during his lifetime.
Because in an era of low productivity, population is the real strength that can be relied on.
Why did the Anti-Japanese War persist in the end when China was so weak? It’s because of the large population. Anyway, I will never admit defeat before you kill me.
The Chinese have been like this since ancient times. Even if the invaders enslave us for a while, as long as there are still people among us who can breathe, the uprising will not stop.
Just look at the Yuan Dynasty
. From the beginning to the end, they were busy recruiting people, selecting talents, raising materials and vehicles, and mobilizing food and grass. They were not only preparing for the embassy and the caravan, but also for the two exploration fleets that were about to set sail. Luo Chong also attached great importance to it.
More than half a month after Niu Wei came to Hanyang City, the embassy and the caravan had not yet set off, and the You brothers in Liuyang County in the east set off at Luo Chong's urging.
After they completed a simple sailboat command training, they each led three sailboats and set off.
This was still the largest fleet voyage in the history of the Han tribe. The flood control operation at the beginning of the year was not counted at all. Although dozens of wooden boats were dispatched and hundreds of manpower were transported, it was different from the sailboats. The nature of the missions of the two fleets was not the same.
Besides, although you had many ships that time, how many people could a ship carry? A sailboat could carry 100 to 80 people, and it could also bring enough food and fuel.
Fuel is a point that needs special mention. Several sailboats responsible for the expedition mission all have stoves, which are small clay stoves made of refractory clay. They are portable and usually placed in the cabin. They can be moved to the deck when cooking. There is charcoal in the cabin, and the crew has the conditions to cook on the boat.
In this regard, it is not comparable to a small wooden boat. Can you eat, drink, defecate and urinate on the boat? My sailboat can, and the living standard is not bad.
That day, Luo Chong personally sent You Fu southward, and then took You Ye's fleet through the waterway of Daze to the newly built Weishan County. After checking the work of Yun Zhi, the county governor, he hurried back to Hanyang City, and then kept in close contact with You Fu through the flying eagle letter.
Why do you do this?
That's because Luo Chong is curious. A brand new world map is being presented to Luo Chong through the description in You Fu's navigation log.
It's not that Luo Chong is so anxious, but the speed of this inland sailboat is definitely surprising. If it really reaches high speed, you will know the power of shipping.
If you can't imagine it, there is an ancient poem that describes it very vividly.
"I left Baidi in the colorful clouds in the morning, and returned to Jiangling in a day.
The monkeys on both sides of the river kept crying, and the light boat had passed through thousands of mountains."
It is not an exaggeration to say that a ship can travel a thousand miles a day. Of course, this is under the condition of favorable wind and favorable water.
And Youfu's fleet is just in the right place now. He is going with the flow and rushing downstream. Although there is no favorable wind, the driving force brought by the crosswind is also considerable.
Even under the suppression of the hydrographic reconnaissance boat in front, Youfu has deliberately slowed down.
But even so, the fleet took only one day to reach the tributary of the Jinsha River estuary, that is, the intersection of the southeast tributary of the Wuxia waterway and the Liuyang River.
How to describe this hydrological relationship? Let's put it this way. The Liuyang River and the Rushui River both run from north to south. They are more than 100 kilometers apart in the east-west direction, sandwiching a Ruyang County. On the whole, the two rivers are parallel on the map, which looks like the number '11'.
The lower reaches of the Rushui River, after a large arc turn to the southeast, directly pass through Wuxia and enter the
Jinsha River. This is the waterway that Luo Chong led his people through at the beginning of the year. But at the end of this waterway, that is, the end of the Rushui River, before entering the Wuxia Mountains, a southeast-oriented tributary extends from the Rushui River.
At that time, Luo Chong concluded that according to the direction of this tributary, it must eventually merge into the Liuyang River. As a result, it really merged into the Liuyang River.
This is equivalent to building a horizontal channel between two parallel rivers. It looks like the letter 'H' has been changed from '11', but the angle of the channel formed by the tributary in the middle is not very straight. It points from northwest to southeast and becomes oblique. In the end, it looks a bit like the letter 'N', but the two rivers are indeed connected more than 100 kilometers downstream.
Moreover, this horizontal tributary is not small. Now is the midsummer season. With sufficient rainfall and water, the width of this river generally reaches 50 meters, which is wider than the Rushui River. It can directly run sailboats.
The depth of this river has not been checked yet, but no matter how shallow the river is, a river 50 meters wide will not be too shallow. In theory, this river has a waterway channel from Liuyang County to Hanyang and Ruyang counties in summer.
Of course, whether this channel is mature and effective, whether the river is deep enough, how big a ship can run, and how much load and draft it can bear are still unknown.
More importantly, this is only the hydrological situation in summer. In autumn and winter, inland rivers are affected by rainfall and tidal gravity, and the water level generally drops. Whether the conditions for sailing ships can pass by then will have to wait until the actual investigation in autumn to confirm.
On the afternoon of the day of departure, when Youfu's fleet arrived at the intersection of Liuyang River and the tributary, they decisively ordered to drop anchor and then sent a letter to Luo Chong to ask for the mission order to explore the tributary.
Youfu's choice was correct. The original intention of their fleet was to explore all the available waterways downstream, scout the hydrological conditions of each waterway, and see if there is the ability to pass ships and how large ships can support the passage.
This was originally their most important task.
Luo Chong responded the same afternoon after receiving the news. He sent a ship into the tributary, went upstream to scout the hydrological information of the waterway, and arrived at the entrance of the Jinsha River to observe the specific situation of the river dam that was blown up at the beginning of the year to see if it has been restored or unblocked.
After completing this task, you must reply in time, then return along the tributary and merge with the other two ships, and continue to move toward the lower reaches of the Liuyang River.
The discovery of this waterway will definitely have an impact on the development strategy of the Han tribe, because Luo Chong had planned there as early as the beginning of the year. There is a "giant wood county" and a "Jinchuan county" he envisioned.
On both sides of the basin, there are dense primeval forests on one side and vast plains formed by flood impacts on the other side. There are a large number of forest resources and land resources, and water resources are not lacking. It is definitely a good place to develop agricultural planting at this stage. It is not a problem to build a large shipyard on the spot and build larger ships by utilizing the forest resources there and being close to important waterways.
It can be said that as long as there are people, this place is definitely a treasure land suitable for human survival and development. There is food, firewood, and building materials. What is more rare is the convenient water transportation. Where can such a Feng Shui treasure land be found in this era?
Unfortunately, it is the shortcoming of insufficient population that restricts the development of the Han tribe and restrains Luo Chong's ambition. Otherwise, he will definitely be able to quickly expand the territory of the Han tribe to a point that others dare not even think about, but all this must be implemented under the condition of sufficient population.
Without long-term population stationing, what can you use to occupy a piece of land, even if it is a piece of unowned land.
However, although Luo Chong was helpless, good news came the next day. The No. 1 reconnaissance ship successfully arrived at the mouth of the Wuxia River along the tributary.
The emergence of this news did prove Luo Chong's previous conjecture that the Liuyang River and the Ruyang River are actually interoperable.
At the same time, You Fu also sent a reconnaissance report on the blasting point at the entrance of Wuxia River. Because of the impact of the river water, some stones and silt that were not washed away by the north have now been washed away. It should be because the surge in water flow in summer washed away the remaining stones.
This is good news, and it also proves that this tributary is capable of sailing in summer.
At the end of the letter, You Fu also asked Luo Chong to name this horizontal tributary.
Considering the special east-west direction of this tributary, Luo Chong named it Chaoyang River, because whether it is east or west, its direction can be aimed at the place where the sun rises and sets.
The Chaoyang River section starts from the entrance of Wuxia River in the west and flows into the lower reaches of Liuyang River in the east. It is nearly 200 kilometers long. The maximum width of the river in summer is 80 meters and the minimum width is more than 40 meters. It is capable of sailing, and no human activities have been found on both sides.
This is the final report submitted by You Fu. No other tribes were found to survive in this section of the river basin, and Luo Chong was not surprised at all.
This area, which is more than 100 kilometers long, should have an area of tens of thousands of square kilometers. However, this area has been flooded since last summer, especially in the Chaoyang River Basin, where the flood is particularly serious, all caused by the barrier lake at the river mouth.
Therefore, in the past two years, the labor market of Liuyang County has continuously expanded its influence to the south, basically absorbing all the homeless tribes. This is why Luo Chong has the capital to build so many counties this year.
The Han tribe has people. Currently, the registered population exceeds 60,000. When Yun Zhi of Weishan County brings back the 50,000 people along the lake that he promised, the Han tribe is expected to break through the 100,000 mark in two years, or even 200,000.
This is not an exaggeration, because the larger the population base, the faster it grows, and it grows in geometric multiples.
Within two years, one pair of parents gives birth to two children, and one thousand pairs of parents will add 2,000 people. What about ten thousand pairs? What about one hundred thousand pairs?
As long as they can survive ten years, and the first batch of children born since the establishment of the Han tribe reach the age of twelve or thirteen, will the Han tribe still be afraid of having no population?
I'm afraid that by that time, hundreds of thousands or even millions of newborns will be born every year, which will scare people to death.
But that will be ten years later after all, and Luo Chong's generation can't sit idle. Before the current population explosion, they should find ways to expand territory, strive for more land for their children and grandchildren, and develop more fertile fields.
This is called preparing for a rainy day. Otherwise, when those children grow up, they will give birth to a million or eight hundred thousand children every year. Just solving the problem of feeding the whole nation will worry you to death.
Don't think this is an exaggeration. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, when the Second World War had just ended, how many people were born in the country in order to restore the population? Almost every family had five or six, seven or eight children. Otherwise, there would be more than one billion people suddenly appearing from nowhere. Don't underestimate the reproductive capacity of human beings.
But Luo Chong is not afraid. Is there motivation only when there is pressure? Explaining this truth to the top leaders can also appropriately add a little pressure to them. They should all work hard for me. If you want your children and grandchildren to have food to eat in the future, you should work hard to enclose land for me.
You Fu didn't quite understand the relationship between them yet, but what he was doing now was actually making preliminary reconnaissance preparations for the Han tribe to enclose the land, detect the terrain, detect the waterways, record the local natural climate, terrain and geomorphic features, where is suitable for building cities, where is suitable for human habitation, and where is the important pass with military strategic significance.
In fact, You Fu didn't quite understand these, but he was obedient enough and recorded in detail. Luo Chong could analyze the local characteristics based on the records he sent back.
Another important task was to contact the tribes on both sides of the downstream as much as possible, and absorb them as much as possible. If they could be absorbed peacefully, they would be absorbed. For local forces that were unwilling to submit, the Han tribe would never mind using force. The Han tribe developed too fast, and so many places needed labor to participate in the construction. It was no problem to capture more disobedient people and make them slaves. It would save more money to use slaves to work.
So, after receiving Luo Chong's order, You Fu waited for the No. 1 reconnaissance ship to return to the downstream exit of Chaoyang River from the Wuxia estuary, and after meeting up with the other two reconnaissance ships, they continued to move downstream along the Liuyang River.
That is, from this day on, the fleet began to discover strange tribes that had never been seen before on both sides of the river. Now they are located more than 300 kilometers south-east of Liuyang County. This is a new area that the Han tribe has never touched. Everything here seems so strange and very tempting.
The distance within three days of sailing is not far or near, and it is definitely an area that the Han tribe can conquer.
In the afternoon of that day, when the three large sailboats raised their sails and followed the hydrographic reconnaissance boat downstream, a group of men and women standing on the shore and fishing with simple fishing nets looked at the three giant sailboats. The whole group of people were stunned, and they didn’t even know that the fish they had finally caught had struggled out of their hands.
"Report to Captain You, foreign activities have been discovered on the shore. Should we go ashore to contact them?"
A crew member stood on the observation platform on the top of the cabin and loudly reported the situation to You Youfu, the head of the Geographic Reconnaissance Group, and requested action.
(End of this chapter)
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