Gonghuo Basin, the area where the Wu and Lei tribes gather.
Thousands of people on both sides of the Jicang River are busy farming.
On the river beach where the five tribes are scattered on the north bank, irregular large areas of farmland follow the river bank and the undulating hillsides, forming a criss-crossing farmland scene.
On the south bank, within a radius of more than ten miles around the planned royal city, the settlements of the five major ethnic groups have been scattered and built with more than 40 courtyards of different sizes.
These courtyards are made of adobe bricks or rammed earth. Although some have not yet been roofed and covered with thatch, they are basically completed.
Relying on these settlements and large and small courtyards, acres of farmland have been reclaimed all around.
These farmlands appear to be scattered here and there, but if you look closely, you will see that they are crisscrossed and arranged very straight.
Standing on a high mound located in the center of the royal city and looking around, you can more clearly see that the four central axes of the southeast, northwest and northwest are divided into neat areas in all directions.
The four major ethnic groups each occupy one area.
Although it is still very scattered now, in the near future, this place will become a prosperous land.
In the future, all tribes will be proud to move here.
According to the current plan, the south bank where the royal city is located will form an agricultural and political center, while the Gonghuo area on the north bank will form an industrial and commercial center.
In terms of transportation, the north bank where the Gonghuo tribe is located has more advantages. There are more tribes radiating along the Bagong Avenue, making travel more convenient.
But these two regions certainly cannot be separated and work independently. With continuous development, the connection will become closer.
But to maintain this increasingly close relationship, the bridges connecting the two sides of the Taiwan Strait must remain open and unimpeded.
The pontoon bridge that was hastily built in September is now overwhelmed after several months of being trampled back and forth every day. Not only has it begun to be damaged in many places, but the main structure has also experienced many problems, and it often even shakes people and goods.
Falling into water situation.
The rainy season will soon begin after spring begins. As the water flow in the Jicang River increases, the pontoon bridge is expected to last for at most a month before being washed away.
Nowadays, there are frequent exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. If there were no bridges and only relied on rafts and wooden boats, the situation would definitely become more troublesome.
Therefore, Xu Chen hurried over this time before the spring plowing and sowing had finished, just to quickly build a better pontoon bridge.
Xu Chen now lives in a small courtyard of the Ba tribe here. The four men and four women in it are all carefully selected by mother Ba from the Ba tribe. Two tough hunter officers, Ju and Gao, are also there.
Among them, there are two other equally strong guys, both of whom are the most courageous hunters of the Ba tribe, and the four women are also Xu Chen's closest aunts, including the Thirteenth Aunt and the Fifteenth Aunt.
As the main clan, Juhegao mainly maintains the unity of the four families here, including security, hunting, farming and training. Each courtyard has a woman as the head of the family, responsible for taking care of and managing the family.
And with Xu Chen in charge here for a long time, there won't be any problems.
This time Xu Chen brought over a group of people such as Ye and Gu Ju, making the main courtyard much more lively than the other three courtyards.
In fact, since the four new rammed earth houses of the Ba people were built, they have been very lively every day.
The current living pattern is different from the previous tribes living scattered for tens of miles. The six tribes of the Bameng tribe, except the Muya tribe, have divided settlements near the north gate, distributed within ten miles up and down the river, which seems to be relatively stable.
Although they are scattered, it is actually not a little bit closer than the previous situation where the Ba tribe traveled thirty miles to the Wu tribe, and the Wu tribe traveled fifty miles to the Ji tribe. Moreover, each tribe had horses, so visiting each other was almost like drinking water.
Therefore, after settling down, the Bameng tribes interacted with each other almost every day, and the Ba tribe was the favorite place for all tribes to come.
First, the houses of the Ba people are the most spacious, clean and beautiful, and they have a lot of property, including all kinds of production and living supplies, livestock and poultry, and they are very lively.
Second, the Ba tribe is also the core chief tribe of the entire grand alliance. They are also proud of the Ba tribe, and they interact with each other to strengthen emotional ties.
Third, the location of the settlement of the Ba people is the most special, because it is on the only road from the royal city to the north coast of the Gonghuo people, and the pontoons and docks must pass through the Ba people.
As for other tribes, the same is true. Whenever they have free time or are passing by across the river, they all like to go to the fourth courtyard of the Ba tribe to visit and say hello.
As a result, the royal city has not yet been built, and many tribal houses have not yet been built. The area where the Ba people have settled has become extremely lively, and has become a gathering place for news and a perfect place for chatting and exchanges.
After Xu Chen came back from the Ba tribe and settled down in the main courtyard, he was made to laugh and cry every day by the people who came to visit and say hello. However, he also liked the lively atmosphere, so he interacted with people from different tribes every morning and evening.
In order to build a new pontoon, Xu Chen specially built a pergola near the Gonghuo Pier on the north bank and began preparations to build a single wooden boat.
As long as the floating bridge is well built, it can actually withstand larger floods.
But the requirements for floating piers and connecting and fixing materials are very high.
At present, Xu Chen can only use wood and ropes, so he is not sure how much the floating bridge can withstand the impact of floods.
But he knew that using boats as floating piers would have much better bearing capacity and stability than using logs as floating piers.
Even if it cannot withstand the biggest floods in summer, it can at least survive the spring and autumn.
As long as this kind of pontoon bridge is successfully constructed, cross-strait traffic will only be troublesome for two or three months at most throughout the year.
In midsummer, when it rains the most, there will actually be very few interactions between tribes.
First, the climate is hot and rainy, making travel inconvenient.
Second, poisonous snakes, venomous insects and wild beasts are rampant, so it is not a good time to go out.
Therefore, even if there are no bridges on both sides of the Taiwan Strait in summer, it will not have much impact. Almost nothing can be done anyway.
Several carpenters of the Ba ethnic group have now built seven wooden boats. The first two were experimental in nature and are now useless. They were left at the mouth of the Ba ethnic group to be used as fishing boats. In addition, the three wooden boats built for Mother's Day last September
A wooden boat carrying ten people has always been the main transport ship. Later, Xu Chen went to Gonghuo Basin in winter to preside over the construction of settlements and various workshops. Several carpenters built two more wooden boats at home. The hulls were larger, but they were only
It can seat more than ten people.
The largest one has become Xu Chen's main flagship, and this is the one we are going to take this time.
At present, due to the crude splicing techniques such as mortise and tenon, glue, etc., when Xu Chen builds a ship, he always determines the size of the ship based on the size of the logs. Each board is made of solid wood. Except for the two sides being joined together, the two ends are not.
Do any splicing processing.
Because fewer joints mean fewer gaps, the possibility of water leakage is smaller.
With the experience accumulated from these seven large and small wooden boats, the single floating pier that Xu Chen wants to build now is not difficult at all.
These wooden boats used as floating piers need to be made into the shape of a boat, with nothing inside. Then the wooden boat is used as a carrying platform, and bridges and wooden boards are built on it.
This time, Xu Chen brought over four carpenters, and also recruited several carpenters and apprentices from the wood processing factory and the vehicle processing factory. They formed a team of twenty people and started working near the dock.
There is currently no shortage of wood in the Gonghuo Tribe. A year ago, Xu Chen arranged for the Gonghuo Tribe, the Thunder Tribe, the Five Ghost Tribes and other tribes to prepare masonry and wood. Currently, there are hundreds of logs piled on the river bank, all of which are two feet and three feet in diameter.
The giant wood, which is as tall as a foot, was originally used as a beam for the construction of the royal city. However, due to urgent matters, we can only use it first.
According to Xu Chen's design, each of these single-hull wooden boats is three meters long, one meter wide, with a pointed front and a wide back. Every two boats serve as a set of floating piers, which are made of wooden squares and planks with a mortise and tenon and copper nail structure.
Form a bridge deck.
Therefore, not only are they at the dock responsible for sawing wood to build pontoon wooden boats, but the wood processing factory is also processing the wooden squares used as load-bearing beams and the planks for laying the bridge deck according to his requirements.
But wooden boats alone are not enough. In order to stabilize these wooden boats in the river and prevent them from being washed away, more methods must be thought of.
Xu Chen didn't know how the ancient floating bridge was made, but he knew that the anchor played a huge role in fixing the ship in the water.
However, copper is still a scarce item at the moment, and just to build a pontoon requires building twenty or thirty single-hull wooden boats. Therefore, it is impossible to make so many metal anchors, so the simplest and cheapest one can only be stone.
Therefore, Xu Chen arranged for Lei to take a large group of the most powerful hunters from each tribe to look for large rocks nearby. The style was not required, but it must be heavy, and the heavier, the better. He tried his best to get it back.
So in addition to groups of shirtless men carrying logs to the dock every day, you can often see dozens of people using hemp ropes and wooden poles to carry large rocks weighing hundreds of kilograms from the wild.
transported back.
These large stones were transported to the river. Xu Chen asked the carpenters to find suitable locations to drill stone holes or grooves for tying ropes, and then pushed them into the river according to the prescribed route.