The return of the expedition team made the camp even more lively and joyful.
Xu Chen finally felt relieved. As long as the road to the Mongols was built, salt from the salt mines could begin to be supplied to the entire country of Pakistan in large quantities.
By spring at the latest, Pakistan will gradually get rid of its salt shortage.
And after the waterway from the Tung Forest Lake to the Wulong River is explored and opened, this inaccessible primitive dense forest will also usher in the footprints of a large number of Pakistanis, starting a large-scale development boom.
Because if you want to harvest all the tung trees in the tung forest and press all the oil, a large number of laborers are needed, and autumn and winter are also the most slack times for various tribes.
As long as a batch of wooden boats are built, the Ba, Wu and Hu people in the upper reaches, the Gonghuo Basin in the middle and the Cicha people in the lower reaches can go to pick tung trees and increase their wealth.
As long as there are more people coming and going, the population will gradually gather.
Within a few years, relying on picking tung trees and pressing oil in the tung trees will definitely form a unique economic industry and slowly develop into a lively small gathering place.
Then open up the roads between the Sheng people and the salt mines, the roads between the salt mines and the tung trees, and the roads leading to the Mongolian people. In this way, a preliminary transportation network will be established with the salt mines as the center.
Eventually, based on the camp of the salt mine, a small township structure may gradually be developed.
As long as the great witch of the Yugong clan works hard enough, there shouldn't be much of a problem with thousands of people settling in this area within ten years.
Although this pattern is still very small, the expansion of the population cannot be rushed at all. After all, it is not a long-term solution to rob the captive population. In the end, it can only rely on the stable living environment brought about by adequate food and clothing and growth through natural reproduction.
In the past eight years, the number of children of the Ba tribe alone has increased by fifty or sixty, accounting for nearly 30% of the entire tribe's population, and this number continues to increase on a large scale every year.
The same goes for other tribes. The Gonghuo Tribe, Yu Gong Tribe and the vicinity of Wangcheng are also full of children.
This wave of baby boomers, born after farming and building houses, will gradually become the main population of the new generation in Pakistan in ten years, and will soon bring about another explosive growth in population.
After two or three waves of births like this, Pakistan's labor force will also experience a blowout, and the shortage of people will be greatly alleviated.
…
After a grand and lively bonfire dinner, the exploration of salt mine development, road construction and waterways in the Tung Forest Lakeland also officially kicked off.
Next, Xu Chen stayed in the camp for another three days, arranging for people to build a smokehouse for cured animal meat and use pine and cypress to smoke and dry it. At the same time, he planned the salt mine, camp, and farming around the lake, leading to the Mongolian people.
After careful guidance and arrangements for road planning and other follow-up projects, escorted by a group of Imperial Guards happily carrying large and small bags of snow and salt, they set off from the salt mine and headed toward the Mongols along the newly discovered road.
Lei led a team of dozens of hunters with better water skills and dozens of barbarian men and women who were captured by the dragon back to the Youtung Forest Lakeland.
His mission on this trip was not only to find a waterway from the lake to the Wulong River, but also to find a suitable place around the lake to open a new camp and arrange for the two barbarians to start learning simple farming and production.
Large-scale collection of tung trees.
Xu Chen's request to him was to try to return to the royal city before the witchcraft meeting.
There is still more than half a month to go. Although it is a bit rushed, it is generally not too late.
Long took the remaining dozens of hunters brought from the royal city to help the tribes of the Yu Gong clan build salt mines, and at the same time assisted the Yu Gong clan to start building roads.
The main force in the development of salt mines is the Yu Gong clan. Once the roads are built and the camp construction is completed, these people will slowly withdraw to the tribes. Those who stay will need to negotiate with the Yu Gong clan’s great shaman and a group of clan chiefs to make arrangements. Xu Chen will do it in a short time
I won't worry about it anymore.
Although he drew a big cake for the great wizard of the Yugong clan.
But whether the Panyu Gong family can eat it depends on their own hard work.
After all, pie doesn't fall from the sky, and Xu Chen can't conjure up more people to help them out of thin air.
What's more, the development of the royal city is in full swing right now. The construction of the royal city, a new round of house construction for various tribes, large-scale rice field reclamation, and most importantly, the traffic situation on both sides of the Jicang River must be solved.
He has decided that after returning this time, he will start gathering people to build wooden bridges to once and for all solve the intermittent and unsafe traffic conditions on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Building a bridge must be very difficult, and he still needs careful inspection and research before he can determine the bridge building plan.
But no matter how difficult it is, he will find a way to complete it. After all, it is just a small and medium-sized river that is only thirty or forty meters wide during the dry season and only seventy or eighty meters wide during the wet season.
After years of continuous observation, the summer water of Jicang River is not as terrifying and unconquerable as first imagined.
Because in recent years, with the extensive use of bronzes, especially the large-scale construction of the royal city, a large number of craftsmen have been trained one after another. Building a wooden bridge across both sides of the Jicang River is no longer an epic task that cannot be completed.
At best, it's a spectacle, but it's quite difficult.
Xu Chen believed that he would be able to complete this small-scale civilization upgrade task.
As long as this bridge is successfully constructed, the construction level of Pakistani craftsmen will be greatly improved, laying a strong architectural foundation for the future development of various tribes.
One day later, Xu Xuchen arrived at the Mongolian people.
He came here not for inspection, but to soak in the hot springs.
More than ten days passed in a flash from the departure from the royal city to the conquest of the barbarians to develop the salt mines. During this period, I was either walking through the virgin forest or working in the salt mines. I had no room to sleep at night, not even a tent. I slept on the ground with my clothes on.
As for sleeping, my whole body was already dirty. Although I had taken several cold baths in the lake, it could not be compared with the warm and comfortable hot springs.
So he spent a whole day comfortably soaking in the Mongolian hot springs, and then asked a group of young Mongolian women to help him take a good bath several times, until the dirt all over his body was completely scrubbed away, and his skin became whiter.
Then he reluctantly set off back to the royal city again.
It was another four days before we returned to the royal city.
He gave the fifty forbidden soldiers who came back a ten-day holiday and asked them to return the salt they brought back to their own tribes. He ordered them to rush back to the military camp to report three days before the witchcraft meeting.
Four witches from the Fire Tribe, the Five Ghost Tribe, and the Pi Tribe and the chiefs of the nearby tribes held a court meeting.
The content of this court meeting was very simple. It was to report the news of the discovery of a large salt mine, and to give some of the snow salt and bacon carried back by war horses to each tribe as a meeting gift.
Although the gift was not expensive, after hearing that there would be enough salt in the future, the four witches and all the clan leaders were extremely excited and squatted down to express their most sincere thanks to Xu Chen.
In the next two days, when Xu Chen rode around the royal city, every tribe he visited would arouse warm cheers.
All tribes already know that His Majesty the Witch King has found a large salt mine. There will never be a shortage of salt in the future, and the price is much cheaper than before.
In order to thank Xu Chen for his greatness and generosity, wherever he went, men, women, and children brought out the best food from the tribe to entertain them, and men and women kept sending various kinds of fish, meat, melons, and fruits to the palace all day long, and in the royal city
The laborers working at various construction sites are also working harder.
These are a group of the most primitive and simple human beings.
As long as you treat them well, they will treat you twice as well without asking for anything in return.
After the two-day inspection, Xu Chen convened a meeting with the heads of various departments in the royal city to continue the meeting to lay out the construction plan for autumn and winter, as well as work arrangements for rice field reclamation and bridge building.
After the meeting, the Yizheng Palace issued orders one after another.
The first is to ask tribes to speed up house construction.
The second is to continue to accelerate the construction of the Wangcheng planning area.
The third is to urge the tribes near the royal city to reclaim rice fields according to the plan.
The fourth is to recruit craftsmen and civilians to build embankments and roadbeds on both sides of the Jicang River, and prepare a large amount of wood to build bridges.
The first three items are all things that have been arranged before. All the three imperial departments of inspection, construction, and farming need to do is increase their supervision and inspections.
The fourth item, building river embankments and building bridges, required Xu Chen’s personal planning and guidance.
Therefore, after the palace order was conveyed, Xu Chen began to get into the busy schedule of leaving early and returning late.
Regarding building bridges, although Xu Chen had some simple plans in mind, there were a lot of troubles before they were actually built.
The first step is to build river embankments on both sides along the five miles upstream and downstream of the royal city.
The climate of this era was very different from that before Xu Chen's time travel. Although there were four seasons, it was similar to the climate of the south in later generations. Summers were long and winters were short, and the overall climate was warmer. In summer, it could even be said to be similar to a tropical rainforest climate, with extremely abundant rain.
The rainy season begins in July and lasts until July.
During the rainy season, lakes and rivers are naturally plentiful with water, especially in May and June, when thunderstorms are frequent. Once a heavy rain comes, it will be as terrifying and exaggerated as a pouring bucket.
Although the entire Jicang River Basin is not large, there are hundreds of large and small streams and rivers that merge into it along the way. Such a large amount of water suddenly surges into the main river in summer, causing the Jicang River to surge by two times in summer.
Three meters, the flood is enough to submerge dozens or even hundreds of meters of river beaches on both sides.
It had been three years since the planning and construction of the royal city, and Xu Chen had roughly figured out Ji Canghe's temperament.
This flood may seem terrifying, but in fact the highest level of the flooded river beach is only about three meters. The main reason is that the overall terrain of the Gonghuo Basin is very low and relatively gentle, so the flooded area looks very large.
In fact, even if the bridge is not built, Xu Chen will still build the embankment as soon as possible.
Because the climate has been relatively stable in the past few years, and there have been no particularly huge and disastrous rainstorms. Even the extremely violent rainstorms every summer, he feels, are just the normal climate of this era.
If there is a more violent heavy rain disaster, once the Jicang River floods, even the royal city and nearby settlements and large areas of farmland will be flooded.
This kind of loss is absolutely unacceptable to Xu Chen.