Chapter 998 True or False Coal Mine
Now the Han tribe is developing vigorously and needs a lot of manpower. Even if it is to increase the population, those soldiers have to be sent back home to have children.
So Luo Chong has made a decision. If the situation on Qiongzhou Island stabilizes, it will be inevitable to appropriately reduce some troops next year.
One plan after another gradually formed in Luo Chong's mind. Only the coal issue made him clueless. The capital of the Han tribe will become a cultural and political center in the future. Naturally, it must be surrounded by a huge industrial industry. Otherwise, the huge capital needs some industrial products. Do they have to be transported from the north for thousands of miles? In this case, the transportation cost is too high, which is not conducive to the development of industry.
Luo Chong thought for a long time and decided to write a letter to Tang Yao to ask where You Fu's geological exploration team is now.
When Luo Chong ordered You Fu to look for coal, he asked him to start from Tang Tribe and search northward. These people have now gone deep into the wilderness and lost contact. They did bring flying eagles, but only You Fu could contact Luo Chong, because Luo Chong had a fixed location, and You Fu was not in an area familiar to the flying eagles. Even if Luo Chong released the flying eagles, those flying eagles could not find You Fu's location, so now if they wanted to find him, they could only ask Tang Yao to see if You Fu had left any clues for him.
After writing a letter to Tang Yao, he naturally did not forget to ask about the current situation of Tang Tribe in the front, and asked about You Fu's news in the back. Then Luo Chong asked his personal guards to send it to Tang Yao with the flying eagle.
The giant eagle spread its wings and flew rapidly towards the south.
At the same time, the exploration team led by You Fu was also looking for traces of coal in the wilderness north of Tang Tribe.
This is a team of 200 people, with 10 people in each group, a total of 20 groups. Each group must have a herdsman who is mainly responsible for taking care of the horses in the team, and several hunters who are responsible for collecting food and setting up camps for everyone. In addition, there are two special positioning personnel who master compasses and telescopes, responsible for mapping and identifying directions. Most importantly, each group has one or two foremen borrowed from Dongxin County by Youfu.
These foremen are all managers of the Dongxin County coal mine. They are most familiar with the terrain around the coal mine. Whether the team can successfully find the coal mine depends entirely on these people. Otherwise, they can only hope that God will open his eyes and "give" them a coal mine for free.
The 20 teams spread out in a fan shape, with each group separated by several kilometers horizontally, forming an arc radiating to the north.
These teams have been walking north for several months, but in fact they have not walked very far, because it always takes a long time to confirm whether there is coal underground when they encounter suspicious places.
At present, there are four main ways for the Han tribe to find coal mines. The first is to look at the terrain. There will be absolutely no coal on tall mountains, especially stone mountains. However, where there are sedimentary rocks, the possibility of finding coal is relatively large, such as sandstone formed by the weathering of river silt deposition, and layers of shale, which are all types of sedimentary rocks.
This is related to the formation of coal. Coal is not formed by the cooling of volcanic magma, but by the deposition of plants hundreds of millions of years ago, coupled with physical and chemical changes, and finally evolved. Therefore, coal belongs to sedimentary veins and cannot appear on high mountains.
Looking at the terrain and looking at the stones have become the main search directions.
Another way is to look at the vegetation. If there is occasionally a "bald spot" in an area in a large forest, and the vegetation is very scarce, although it is not necessarily guaranteed that there must be coal mines here, it must have some kind of minerals.
Finally, you can look for wonders, ask local natives, or discover "wonders" yourself. For example, the surface of a certain place is carbonized black, or the soil in a certain place can burn, or there is a natural sky fire in a certain place, or there is a strange smell. These are all possible characteristics of coal.
Although coal mines are buried deep underground, there are generally raised black mineral seedlings, that is, a certain vein, and one point just happens to be exposed on the ground. As long as you find such a mineral seedling and dig along, you can find the entire coal mine.
Such mineral seedlings float on the surface, causing the surrounding soil to carbonize to varying degrees, and there may be "combustible soil".
There are also sky fires and special smells. Coal is divided into bituminous coal and anthracite according to its different components. Bituminous coal is coal with a high sulfur content, and the smell of sulfur is very special. If it is enriched to a certain extent, it will definitely emit a special smell different from the surrounding.
In addition, coal is also accompanied by many chemical gases, including smelly gas, fragrant toluene, and even burning coal gas. Once cracks appear in the stratum, coal gas or natural gas leaks, and then ignites by natural fire, it will form a long-lasting "sky fire".
Just a month ago, the seven, eight, and nine groups of the exploration team simultaneously found a zone with several of the above characteristics, but the three groups dug here for more than a month and still did not dig out coal, which made everyone a little discouraged.
When they first came here, they found that the vegetation here was very sparse. Within a radius of three kilometers, that is, within the search range of their groups, no mountains or rocks were found, but no sedimentary rocks were found. However, the most special thing here is that there are suspected "ore seedlings".
There are many spotted black marks on the ground, which look very much like signs of coal veins exposed on the surface. If this place is really a ore seedling, then it means that the entire vein has already protruded from the surface here, and there is no need to dig a well at all. Coal can be dug directly on the surface, which is the so-called shallow vein.
At first, everyone was overjoyed and immediately picked up a shovel to look for a hole. As a result, they dug less than half a meter down. The originally dark soil immediately turned into brown soil, which disappointed everyone.
So everyone began to dig holes in the area of several kilometers. Every few hundred meters or when they found a black place on the surface, they would dig a hole to spy on the underground situation, but the results were similar.
Every time they dug half a meter to one meter down, the black carbon layer would turn into brown soil. The deepest part of the carbon layer was less than two meters. The depth of more than two meters was still brown soil. It was not until this time that everyone confirmed that this was a fake "ore seedling".
Before leaving, the seven, eight, and nine groups gathered together for a meeting. Everyone discussed whether to give up the search in this area. After all, they had wasted more than a month here.
Give up. You have spent so much time. Try harder. What if you find it?
Don't give up. You have wasted so much time. What if you still can't find it?
Faced with this difficult decision, thirty people gathered together to discuss.
"I think this is a fake mineral deposit. We have been to the mines in Dongxin County before. Wherever there are mineral deposits exposed on the surface, they are all open-pit mines. There is no need to dig so deep. So there is no value here. Let's give up." The leader of the seventh group said.
"Why is the ground black with so little vegetation here? And there is indeed a carbon layer on the ground. What do you think?" The leader of Group 8 was quite stubborn and unwilling to give up easily. After all, if there is a carbon layer on the ground, it is better than nothing.
"I do have an idea. Do you think there was a forest fire here hundreds of years ago? The fire burned the forest into charcoal, and then over time, it was buried by loose soil. If so, can it explain the phenomenon we see?" The surveyor of Group 9 analyzed and said.
"This..."
All the people in the three groups didn't know what to say after hearing this.
The surveyor just said that this phenomenon does exist. A forest fire burned down the entire forest, so a thick layer of carbon was left on the ground, but because it was not very old, it was not buried deep by the loose soil and all floated on the surface. Just like the results of their excavation, the deepest part of the carbon layer was no more than two meters. This is the evidence.
If this is the case, doesn't it mean that this is a mineral deposit? !
Does this mean that everyone should give up this place directly?
Thinking of this, everyone was a little unwilling.
"What you said is indeed possible, but what if there is really a mineral deposit hidden here, then wouldn't we miss it directly?" The leader of Group 8 was still unwilling to give up, but his previous persistence had begun to waver because of the "forest fire hypothesis".
"This is actually easy to deal with. I have an idea. Everyone will know after trying it." The manager of Group 9 who came from Dongxin County suddenly interrupted and said.
"What method?" Everyone looked at this person.
"There are only two ways to dig coal. One is open-pit mining, which is shallow. Just dig up the soil on the surface and the coal seam below will be exposed directly. If it is buried deeper, you need to dig wells to dig coal. When we explored around Dongxin County before, we also found something. The general deep-well coal is buried between 200 and 500 meters deep. There are also shallow ones near the open-pit mines in Dongxin County, which are only tens of meters deep.
"So if you want to determine whether there is a coal mine here, wouldn't it be better to dig a deep well directly? Let's explore at a depth of 500 meters to see what is underneath."
"This"
everyone was surprised again. It is not a simple matter to dig a well hundreds of meters deep. Even if everyone stays for another month, they may not be able to dig that deep.
But if they want to explore whether there is a coal mine, they still have to dig. It is precisely because of this that after a few months, everyone has not walked very far, because it is very troublesome to verify whether there is a coal mine in a place.
"Dig, it's okay, but here is a dozen kilometers in radius, where can we dig? Where should we choose a site? It takes a lot of time to dig a well several hundred meters deep. What if there is coal underneath and we just missed the target? Wouldn't that not only waste time but also miss the target perfectly?" The leader of Group 7 said worriedly.
"That's easy. We can dig in the place where our Group 8 is exploring. The width from east to west is more than ten kilometers. We can dig in the middle. If there is coal underneath, we can't miss it even if we miss the target. What do you think?" The leader of Group 8 suggested.
"Well, what you said makes sense. If there is a mine, it will definitely not be so narrow. Either there is or there isn't. There is no possibility of missing the target exactly. "The leaders of Group Nine also nodded in agreement, and then Group Eight and Group Nine looked at Group Seven together, asking for their opinions.
The leader of Group Seven saw that it was two to one, and the minority should obey the majority, so he agreed.
So the next day, everyone brought all the baggage and horses and came to the center of the exploration area of Group Eight. The terrain here was not high, which was suitable for digging wells again.
The three groups nodded, and then took the steel pipes from their horses one by one. Someone brought a pipe clamp and a bag of Luoyang shovels specially used for digging holes, and then started the primitive work of digging wells.
The so-called digging of wells is of course not a well with a large diameter, but a deep hole directly in the ground. They only need to use The Luoyang shovel brings up some soil or gravel from the ground, and naturally it can be seen whether there is a coal mine underneath.
Dangdangdang——
the Luoyang shovel was smashed down by a hammer, and then a cylindrical piece of soil was brought up. Then the operation was repeated. When the entire Luoyang shovel was driven into the ground, a steel pipe was connected to it with a pipe clamp. Each steel pipe was one meter long. Everyone only needed to count how many steel pipes were driven down to know how deep the hole was.
However, what was surprising was that they originally thought that they had to drive down two hundred meters to get results and verify whether there was coal underneath, but in the end, a coal seam appeared below after only twenty-six meters, which was something they had never expected.
"Coal is coming out, look, coal is coming out! "A guy who was carrying a Luoyang shovel up suddenly shouted excitedly.
Upon hearing this, everyone hurriedly looked over and saw that the lower half of the cylindrical mud strip brought up from 26 meters underground was black, and there were shiny crystals. Everyone took a look and realized that it was nothing but coal.
"My God, there is really coal here. How deep are we digging now?" The leader of Group 7 asked in surprise.
"Twenty-six meters, not too deep or too shallow. If we can find a real ore seedling, we can directly open-pit mine. In this dark land, there must be a real ore seedling that we have overlooked." The leader of Group 9 confirmed.
"I think everyone should not be happy so early. It is better to continue to dig down to see if it is a real mine. If it is still the same as the surface, we will cry." The leader of Group 8 also said. "
Well, that makes sense. Then we will dig another two meters to see if it is a real coal seam. "The coal seams deposited underground are usually at least 20 meters thick, and the thickest can even reach several hundred meters. If there is really a coal seam below, then it may be the same for dozens of meters.
Everyone stopped hesitating and immediately started to dig again, but before they could do anything, they were stopped by the coal mine manager of Group 9.
"Wait a minute, smell it, is there a bad smell coming out of that hole? Bring a torch quickly, it could be poisonous gas!"
(End of this chapter)
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