Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 374 The hard labor life in Blackstone Town
At the end of September 1788, Su Chong'a from Ningguta Prisoner of War Camp stood on the deck of the Thunder God, looking at the ever-distant mainland, feeling more and more desolate in his heart.

As a man who has never seen the sea and can't swim, Su Chong'a feels that he has confessed in this life, and I am afraid that he will never go back to Shenyang.His old surname is "Cai Hala", his ancestors are Han Chinese, and he lives in Shenyang.Since the Jin Dynasty occupied Shenyang at the end of the Ming Dynasty, they changed their surname from Chai to Man in the era of Huang Taiji.

In August, according to the order of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Beihai Township, some prisoners of the Eight Banners were selected from the Qing army captives in Ningguta and sent to Heishi Town, Kuye Island to perform hard labor.Due to the current shortage of manpower in Beihai Town and the limited number of escorts and guards, the first batch of people is only 8 people.

As soon as the news came out, some of the prisoners of the Qing army were panicked.Many people wondered why they were treated differently from the previous Marshal Fu?The last time the prisoners of the Qing army basically didn’t do any hard work except digging a ditch in the cold weather. They stayed in the cellar all winter, and there was no heavy work except for the roll call every day. listen.

Now it's our turn, take a look, what kind of day is this!Not to mention moving rocks, cutting trees and digging soil every day, the living is not good.What's the matter, you still want to send us to a desert island to do coolies?
joke!The previous batch was all for money.And it was winter, and it wasn't enough of a hassle for these people to go out and chop wood.So at that time, Zhao Xin directly deducted from the rations to maintain the minimum food supply standard, as long as he didn't starve to death.

Now Beihai Town does not plan to release these captives. The Ministry of Civil Affairs intends to let these people become permanent residents of Bitter Leaf Island after their hard labor period expires.

This place in Blackstone Town is actually where the Alexandrovsk of later generations is located.Ding Guofeng had visited this place once before, and later the Civil Affairs Bureau sent a group of people to plan the location.At that time, according to what Meiergua said, there was an ancient city ruins there, named Yidui City.Afterwards, he went back to Beihai Town to look through the information, only to find out that it was the site of the ancient city of the Jin Dynasty.Since there is an old site, it is a good time to use it, so the Ministry of Civil Affairs chose this place as the foothold in the southwest of Kuye Island.

The Thunder God first arrived at Dabo Town at the southernmost tip of Bitter Leaf Island, unloaded some supplies, stayed overnight before setting off again, and headed north along the strait between the Outer Northeast Mainland and Bitter Leaf Island.

This strait was called "Tatar Strait" in later generations, and the islanders called it "Mamiya Strait".In fact, since the Yuan Dynasty, it and the Sea of ​​Japan have been collectively referred to as the "Whale Sea" in the classics of the Central Dynasty.

Count La Perouse, who was visiting Beihai Town, sailed north from here, and he hoped to find a passage between the Sea of ​​Japan and the Sea of ​​Okhotsk from here.

However, because Jiang Tenglin, the governor of Dabo Town, played tricks and did not tell them the truth, the farther the French went north, the shallower the strait became; basically every nautical mile they went north, the water depth decreased by 2 meters.When they reached the position where the water depth was only 20 meters, they never dared to leave again.In fact, the shallowest part of the Tatar Strait is only seven meters, not to mention the French, even Beihai Town's own boats can't get through.

Seeing the seabed gradually increase, the water flow in the strait is almost static, making the French mistakenly think that this is not a strait, but a bay.So on the map they drew, Bitter Leaf Island was drawn as a peninsula.After that, the French had to turn around and return to Dabo Town. Under Jiang Tenglin's guidance, they went north to Okhotsk along the east coast of Kuba Island.

When they passed the town of Oja, the French also saw billowing black smoke from the oil refinery on the shore from the boat.The French, who didn't know where they were, wanted to go ashore for inspection, but Zhang Bo refused.Count La Perouse thought of the coastal defense guns he had seen in Dabo Town (Beihai Town's own 75mm artillery, with a range of 6500 meters), and then gave up the idea of ​​​​forcibly landing ashore.

On the Tatar Strait in winter, the spectacle of whales spraying water jets and swimming around attracted many Qing soldiers.They came to the deck to point and click in amazement.

However, the superficial happiness cannot conceal the distress in these hearts. In fact, the farther the Thor is from the mainland, the more desperate these people will be.If they hadn't been strung together in groups of five with shackles on their feet, maybe someone who couldn't think about it would have committed suicide by jumping into the sea.

The Thor stopped on the sea one kilometer away from Blackstone Town.On the sea surface not far from the shore, several reefs stood abruptly.At this time, the sea was filled with mist, and the three largest reefs were like black steel forks in the hands of demons; this scene made the Qing soldiers on the ship feel like they were in hell, and a young prisoner even cried.

The sailor on the deck sneered and said: "Coward, what's so scary! Let me tell you, the oysters here are very fat, and you can pick up forearm-long ones on the beach casually. Come here, you don't have to eat them all year round. Lack of meat to eat."

Su Chong'a wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, and thought that the weather was so cold that if he went into the water with bare feet to pick up seafood, he would not get sick from the cold.

Taking advantage of the time when the barge was lowered, the prisoners lined up on the deck one by one under the orders of the soldiers.The barge that comes with the Thunder God is not big, and it can seat twenty people at a time. Apart from the captives, there are still a lot of supplies that need to be transported to the shore.When the last shipment of supplies arrived at the beach, it was already dark.

The captives spent their first night in tents around a bonfire. Apart from the hooting of owls, the howling of wolves could be heard faintly around the camp.

When they were woken up by the whistle the next morning, they walked out of the tent trembling one by one to complete the roll call, and then began to eat breakfast.Su Chong'a looked at this strange place while drinking hot stick noodle porridge.

The place where they are now camping is still more than four miles away from the former site of Yidui City, but as the first batch of settlers, Su Chong'a and their labor labor will start here first.

The location of the campsite has been inspected by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in advance, and it is selected in an open space only one mile away from the coast. The area is about the size of three football fields, and the surrounding area has been marked with wooden poles more than one meter high. .

These Qing army captives have been building the road from Ninggu Tower to Fuerdan City in the past few months, so they are very familiar with how to use various tools produced in Beihai Town. The team of 500 people was divided into ten teams, and each team was guarded by a squad of Beihai Navy.

The job of Su Chong'a's team was to go to the lower reaches of the Yidui River to log. After the group of people came here carrying tools, he first dug a shovel of soil with a shovel, bent down to grab a handful, and rubbed it twice in his hands. .The light brown soil is sticky and slippery in the hand, and there are many gravels.

A man in his 30s beside him came over, grabbed a handful of soil and looked at it: "This land is too bad, I'm afraid it won't be possible to grow crops."

Su Chong'a asked curiously, "Have you ever planted land?"

The man said: "Why haven't I planted it before? My family is from Liaoyang. Before I was vacant and served as a soldier, I followed my ama to pick up the crops. If you want to grow food in this land, you have to drain it first, and then you have to plow it. It can't be done until the next year." sowing."

Su Chong'a had never planted land. His family had been serving as soldiers for food since his ancestors, and tenants were taking care of the tens of acres of land in his family.

While the two were working, they chatted a few words to pass the time when they had nothing to do.During the conversation, Su Chong'a learned that the other party's name was Chen Yingqi, who belonged to the Xianglan Banner of the Han Army.During Tiancong's reign, Chen Yingqi's ancestor was taken captive from Pyongyang to Liaoyang due to the war, and settled down there. They are called "Cen Hala" in the old Manchu surname. "Riding the Captain".

The captives were working here, and the North Navy that was guarding them was not idle.The battalion commander who led the team sent a few soldiers with good marksmanship to go hunting in the woods, and occasionally a gunshot could be heard.At noon, they actually shot two deer, which made a group of prisoners overjoyed.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs set a three-year hard labor period for these captives. After the period expires, they can stay in the local area to settle down, or allocate [-] acres of cultivated land in the south of Bitter Leaf Island.At that time, if the Beihai Navy takes down the entire Northeast, they can still take over their families.With such hope, the captives became more active in their work.

For Bitter Leaf Island, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has given overall consideration to the development here.That is, the north is dominated by oil and animal husbandry, the south is dominated by planting, and the central region can only be coal and forestry.

Apart from forestry and coal, Heishi Town has no agricultural prospects at all.The main reason is that limited by the natural conditions of the Yidui River and the Adangji River Valley, and the two sides are sandwiched by mountains, there are too few areas available for reclamation.As for developing towards the coast, don't bother.

In the history of another time and space, due to the poor local land, the farmers who came here in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century reclaimed the land and built farms, and many of them left within a few years.The reason couldn't be more simple. The crops are simply not viable, and even potatoes are not enough to eat.

Therefore, Heishi Town is suitable as a labor base for the prisoners of the Qing army. When the labor period of these people expires, they will be assigned to the plains east of Dabo Town to farm or go to the north to raise livestock. The refugees in the customs and the naturalized people of the island country, the entire Bitter Leaf Island is occupied.

As for the southern part of Bitter Leaf Island, although the plains are open, there are also many swamps. It will take a lot of effort to transform it into an agricultural area.

If the swampy area is to be converted into a field suitable for cultivation, it is necessary to mechanically open ditches and build ridges to drain water, so as to increase the temperature of the ground, increase the temperature difference, and strengthen the activity of aerobic microorganisms; and then reduce organic matter and change the pH by fertilization. Value, so that the land "from swamp into soil" for the job.

Even in modern times, it is no exaggeration to say that it takes at least ten years to improve a swamp area and turn it into a high-yield cultivated land.

This is not at all a modern person who waved his hand and gave an order, and the wasteland could be turned into fertile land in an instant.

Stop talking about potatoes and sweet potatoes.Regardless of whether they are Chinese or foreign farmers, when they come to a strange land and find that the crops that are their staple food are not harvested well, they will be eager to leave this place.And if farmers cannot be retained, agriculture cannot develop, and emerging immigrant cities and towns will hardly develop.

In an agricultural society, farmers' obsession with staple food is often unimaginable to modern people.It's useless even if you tell him a thousand times that potatoes can yield a thousand catties per mu. In the life he has heard and seen since he was a child, that thing is not a staple food!

Even Europeans were very resistant to potatoes in the early days. First, they were not familiar with the way potatoes grow, and second, they were not mentioned in the Bible.

That is to say, European countries are small and food is extremely scarce. It is relatively easy for leaders to change their lifestyles through their own power and influence. Would you try it in an East Asian country?

Islanders eat dumplings or ramen as a dish with rice until today, which shows that rice as a staple food has been deeply engraved into their genes.In the same way, the Chinese have never heard of anyone who wants to eat potatoes or sweet potatoes when they are hungry. Those are things that are only occasionally changed when they are tired of eating the staple food. in the bones.

With the tools at hand and sufficient food, the work of the captive team at the landing site in Blackstone Town is progressing fairly well.But for people like Su Chong'a, the labor in Heishi Town is really hard!
Their logging area is mainly in the lower reaches of the Yidui River, where the river channel is 30 meters wide, and the low-lying areas on both sides are covered with towering trees, densely packed with fir, larch, alder, and willow trees, surrounded by patches of muddy swamp.In addition to those tall trees, there are often huge semi-decayed trees lying horizontally and vertically on the ground in the woodland, and they all need to be cleaned up.Some of these trees fell due to old age, and some were overturned by storms.There are often mossy mounds next to the roots of fallen trees, and pits and trenches next to the mounds.

While the captives were logging, they also had to mow grass around and bundle them into bundles to fill the swamps and deep ditches.This is how the felled wood can be transported out of the forest.

After three or four days of such work, the prisoners were exhausted one by one.They were all listless, with gloomy faces, and went to sleep in the tent every day after work.

By the end of the first week, they had dug a septic tank 20 meters on a side and three meters deep, built temporary toilets; cleared out four basketball court-sized spaces and surrounded them with felled stakes. It is used to resist wild beasts; two wooden blocks have been built, and they are currently used as warehouses; in addition, the captives, under the guidance of the soldiers of the Beihai Navy, built a T-shaped building about three meters high into the sea. The pier has already begun to take shape.

In the second week, Thor sent over a thousand prisoners of war and a batch of supplies.The manpower has tripled, and the construction progress of the entire camp has also accelerated.

As snowflakes began to fall in Heishi Town, the Qing prisoners including Su Chong'a and Chen Yingqi knew that time was getting tighter.Even in the camp at night, the lights were brightly lit, and the prisoners worked until eleven or two o'clock in the evening before getting into the tents to rest, and they got up early the next morning to work again.

Compared with the wet cellars where the captives lived along the Ninggu Tower Road, the residence Su Chong'a and the others built in Heishi Town was much better.The floors in the wood-carved huts are at least one foot above the ground, which can effectively insulate the cold and damp.However, Beihai Town's almost harsh sanitation management has prevented the captives from having a large-scale outbreak of dysentery or other infections.

(End of this chapter)