Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 329 Linchuan Salt Field
The next day, Li Zhongguo's troops began to organize people to build artillery forts. At the same time, they cut down trees along the banks of the Tiandu River and built atap houses under the guidance of the Huiyou Company as residences for the sailors.

Lin Hai left the port on the communication ship Lubode. The villages composed of salt households were located in Linchuan Port on the east side of Sanya Bay, separated from Yulin Inner Port by Fenghuang Ridge.

Since the land route required bypassing Phoenix Ridge and the road was covered with wild vines and made it difficult to walk, he simply chose to take the more circuitous water route, which required bypassing the Luhuitou Peninsula on the west side of the Dadong Sea.

When passing Luhuitou Ridge in the southern part of the peninsula, Lin Hai discovered two abandoned forts at the foot of the mountain. The bricks had been almost completely removed, leaving only the wall foundations.

He had read the local chronicles of Qiongzhou Prefecture and knew that the imperial court had built beacons in Yulin Port during the Hongzhi period. It seemed that these two were the ones with only the foundations left. As Guangdong's coastal defense gradually weakened, this outpost seemed to have been completely abandoned by the Ming army. The bricks on the fort were probably removed by the nearby salt workers.

During the Ming Dynasty, there were six salt fields in Qiongzhou Prefecture, among which Linchuan Field was located in Yazhou. I had also come across this forest in local chronicles, but I didn’t expect it to be so close to Yulin Port.

The Zu Ti went northward along the east side of Sanya Bay, and after bypassing the Nanbian Ridge at the northern end of the Luhuitou Peninsula, it entered a small bay. Both the Sanya River and the Linchuan River flowed into the sea here. This is the Linchuan Port with a history of a thousand years.

Linchuan Port was recorded as early as the Liang and Chen Dynasties in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and it is considered one of the earliest ports in southern Qiongnan. At that time, Linzhen County was established here, which was the predecessor of Linchuan County in the Tang Dynasty. The county was abolished during the Southern Han Dynasty of the Five Dynasties, and then salt fields were established here in the Song and Ming Dynasties.

Due to the continuous sedimentation of silt from the Sanya River and the Linchuan River, the coastline of Linchuan Port continued to invade the south. The area of ​​the late Ming Dynasty was not as wide as that in the Middle Ages, but there were no other disadvantages. Like Yulin Inner Port, Linchuan Port is also surrounded by mountains and has a suitable water depth. There is also a huge bay outside as a buffer water area, which can be called a natural good port.

After the Lubode entered Linchuan Port, Lin Hai saw dozens of small fishing boats anchored in the port, but there were no people on board. Turning his head to the north, he saw hundreds of men, women, old and young working in the salt fields.

These salt pans were built on the mudflats by the sea, close to each other, but not necessarily in square shape, not as regular as the salt pans of later generations. After seeing the Lubode enter the port, someone shouted, and the men and women working in the salt pans suddenly dispersed and ran to the villages in the north.

"It seems that pirates visit here occasionally." Lin Hai smiled to the new captain of the USS Lubode, Huang Kui, who was originally Wei Xiaodong's first mate and will serve as the deputy commander of the garrison in Yulin Port in the future.

"Boss, do we need to send someone to the village to explain our purpose?" Huang Kui asked.

"Forget it, let's not go into the village for now, let's go ashore and take a look first." Lin Hai shook his head after a little thought. Seeing that they did not enter the village to rob, the salt farmers would naturally come back to continue production. Sending people into the village might backfire and make people think that it was pirates cheating.

Lin Hai then brought several personal guards ashore. The first thing that caught his eye was the stones scattered around the salt fields. These stones were obviously carved by humans, and there were many stone grooves one or two inches deep on the upward side.

Most of these stone troughs are one or two feet square, half of them have water in them, and the other half are empty, with a very small number of them covered with a thin layer of salt grains. Some of the stone troughs also have wooden boards placed next to them, as if they were used to scrape salt.

"These should be the salt drying tanks. Put the brine in them and expose it to the sun to produce salt..." Lin Hai said to Huang Kui beside him. These salt tanks are much smaller than he imagined. It is estimated that there are at least thousands of such salt tanks around this salt field. It is not difficult to imagine that the salt workers have to carry the brine and pour it into these salt tanks one by one, wait for it to crystallize, and then scrape up the salt grains and pack them. This is undoubtedly a very labor-intensive job, and this is only the last step in the Ming Dynasty salt drying process.

Lin Hai then went to see the salt pans, and saw that each salt pan was surrounded by stones that were slightly higher than the ground in the middle, and there were ditches dug in between to bring seawater into the salt pans. At this time, there was no water in these ditches, and it was estimated that only high tides like the new moon and full moon tides could allow seawater to flow in and soak the salt mud in the pool.

In most salt fields, there is a wooden rake thrown on the salt mud. When Lin Hai came, the scene of salt workers working was similar to that of farmers hoeing the fields. It seemed that the salt mud needed to be turned over and exposed to the sun for a while after the tide receded before it could be used for subsequent production.

In addition, there are two pools, one high and one low, dug in the middle of each salt field. Lin Hai couldn't quite understand this, but he guessed that it should be used to produce high-concentration brine, which is the process before drying the salt...

After looking around like this for a while, finally two strong young men appeared. Their skin was as black as charcoal. One of them held a harpoon and the other held a hoe. They were obviously sent by the villagers to investigate the situation.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" The two guys came forward and one of them asked in Minnan dialect. It turns out that most of the Han people in Hainan migrated from Fujian during the Sui and Tang dynasties, so Cantonese is not the most popular language in the area. The Leizhou Peninsula in the north of the Qiongzhou Strait also speaks Minnan dialect.

"I am a sea merchant from Zhangzhou, Fujian. I was accidentally blown here by the wind. Do you have any food to sell to us?" Lin Hai took out a silver ingot and sent someone to hand it over.

The reason why Lin Hai came to Linchuan Salt Field was actually to take a look at the salt-drying technology of this era. The population of Jinhe Kingdom now has reached 100,000, and it needs to consume more than one million kilograms of salt every year.

Because the northern part of the island is humid and rainy, it is impossible to dry salt, so the Jinhe Kingdom is currently completely dependent on imports from Fujian, and currently spends more than 10,000 taels of silver each year.

Of course, the money was not entirely paid by Huiyou Company. The salt imported from Fujian and sold in Jinhe Kingdom also generated some income. But for the sake of the people's freedom of salt, Lin Hai has always controlled the salt price in Jinhe Kingdom to the same level as Fujian. The costs of purchasing, transportation, sales and other links are all borne by the company.

With the start of large-scale immigration, this is obviously unsustainable. Jinhe State must be able to produce its own salt, so that the people can eat affordable salt, the company does not have to bear financial expenses, and if it does well, it can also significantly increase revenue.

After all, the profits of the salt industry are there. Lin Hai once visited Yingge Salt Field in later life. That was the largest sea salt factory in the southern part of the Celestial Empire four hundred years later. Both the salinity of the seawater and the light conditions were top-notch, but it seemed to have not been utilized in this era.

The Yinggehai Salt Field is located in Jinjiling, Huangliu Town, Ledong County in later generations, only 120 miles away from the ancient city of Yazhou. It should have been under the jurisdiction of Yazhou in that era.

Since Lin Hai has decided to send Xu Xinlan and Yang Ce to Yazhou, can he also consider salt in addition to iron?
(End of this chapter)