The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 263: Naturally Developed Plain River

After Zhu Jianxuan arranged the Great Lakes and northeastern North America, he turned his attention to central and southern North America:

"How is the exploration and development of the Mississippi River and the interior plains?"

Grand Secretary Zhang Xu stood up to report, and even took out a map and unfolded it for Zhu Jianxuan to look at:
“Your Highness, we have basically completed the exploration of the Mississippi River mainstream, as well as important tributaries such as the Ohio River and the Missouri River.

"After interacting with the indigenous people living around the river, we found that the name Mississippi actually comes from the language of the local indigenous people, and its original meaning is 'big river'.

“The Great River” is much simpler than the Mississippi River, and this river is indeed the largest river in North America, with an annual runoff of about 580 billion cubic meters, about three-fifths of the Yangtze River.

“Nowadays, people usually refer to them as the Great Rivers, or more specifically, the Great Rivers of North America, to avoid confusion with rivers on other continents.

“The longest tributary of the Great River was called the Missouri River by Europeans, and the name Missouri came from the name of an indigenous tribe, and actually meant people who owned canoes.

"After the origin of the name was translated, the explorers began to call the river the Gong River.

"The runoff of the Gong River is about 75 billion cubic meters, slightly higher than that of the Yellow River but only one-twelfth of that of the Yangtze River.

"The tributary with the largest flow of the Great River was called the Ohio River by Europeans. The pronunciation of Ohio also comes from the language of the local indigenous people. It originally meant 'beautiful river' or 'great river'. Now everyone calls it the Beautiful River.

“Because the Mei River Basin is indeed beautiful, it originates from the northwestern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and there are beautiful mountains, rivers, valleys and forests in the basin.

"The Mei River is indeed very large, with a very wide and flat surface, and an annual runoff of about 230 billion cubic meters, almost half of the total runoff of major rivers.

“The total runoff of all the main streams and tributaries of the major rivers above the mouth of the Mei River is actually only 180 billion cubic meters, which is less than that of the Mei River.

“So if we calculate based on runoff, the Mei River is actually the true mainstream of the river.

“Based on the situation in the Dahe and Meihe River basins, we established five major military farms and garrisons from south to north, starting from the mouth of the Dahe River.

“The names of the five military farms are Fengle, Changning, Yongxing, Taiping, and Jing’an. Now each of them has two immigrants from Wei.

"The two guard posts of Taiping are located on the north bank of the river before the Mei River merges into the Dahe River. The other four military farms are all on the east bank of the main stream of the Dahe River."

After listening to these basic situations, Zhu Jianxuan felt that the names of these rivers were quite good. At least they were easy to understand and practical.

This is probably because this is the name used by the local indigenous people, which was formed naturally during hundreds of years of their lives. After being translated according to its original meaning, it is naturally very appropriate.

As for the names of the military farms developed by the five Ming people, they were made up of the most common good words in Chinese.

They all once appeared in the 108 wards of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty.

Fengle, the southernmost of the five military settlements, should be located near Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana in the previous life.

This is the north of the North American river delta. Leaving the messy and fragmented delta area, the first piece of land located on the North American continent is a relatively flat and stable plateau.

The delta of the major rivers in North America is not as clear as the Yangtze River Delta. It is more like the Yellow River Delta that has been expanded several times.

The land in the delta area is all mud flat.

From the satellite cloud map, the entire river delta looks like a rotten leaf.

New Orleans is the only intact place among the rotten leaves and the only high plateau inside the delta swamp, so it naturally became the earliest residential area here.

However, New Orleans is surrounded by swamps and is not suitable for direct farming. It is only suitable for use as a commercial port.

Therefore, the American Garrison explored upstream along the river and chose a piece of higher flat land on the mainland that was suitable for farming and not easily flooded.

Zhu Jianxuan had no impression of the location of Changning. Yongxing should be near Memphis. He also had no impression of Taiping. Jing'an should be a little north of the opposite bank of St. Louis.

The five military farms are relatively evenly distributed on the east bank of the major rivers in North America, with distances between them ranging from two hundred to three hundred kilometers.

Now each military farm area has two guards, which means nearly 100,000 people.

The population of all Spanish colonial outposts in the entire western half of the Great Plains across the river combined is probably not that high.

Only a few thousand people existed in St. Louis at this time.

Once a conflict broke out between the Ming Dynasty or the United States and Spain, the militiamen in these military farms would be able to directly cross the river to occupy land and seize settlements including St. Louis.

Zhu Jianxuan was quite satisfied with this plan, and asked with a little curiosity:
“Other river names have been translated into Chinese, but why is the Appalachian Mountains not translated?

"This transliterated name is too difficult to pronounce. What does the word Appalachia mean?"

Zhang Xu confessed his crime this time:
“Your Highness, please forgive me, we have not found the original meaning of this word, perhaps because it is too long ago.

“It is the name of an indigenous tribe that Europeans encountered in the mountains more than 200 years ago, but this tribe no longer exists.

“The key is that European languages ​​are all phonetic, and they don’t pay much attention to the specific meaning of a syllable.

“European immigrants in North America today don’t know what this word means, and it is now used exclusively as the name of this mountain range.

“This name is indeed a bit difficult to pronounce. In fact, when people say it more often in their daily lives, they will subconsciously shorten it.

“At first it sounded like Apache Mountain, but now it sounds more and more like Apache Mountain.”

Zhu Jianxuan felt a little regretful, but he did not get to the bottom of it:

“Well, since we can’t find the original meaning of the name anymore and everyone is used to calling it Pashan in daily life, let’s just use Pashan as the official name.

"Did you encounter any intractable problems or difficulties in the process of exploring and developing this great river and great plain?"

This time Zhang Xu immediately began to report or complain:
“Your Highness, we currently have two biggest problems.

"One is that the great rivers of North America and their major tributaries are too winding.

"Sailing in this kind of river is like sailing in a strait several kilometers wide, deliberately turning back and forth repeatedly.

"The straight-line distance on land is 100 kilometers, and the length of the route in the river is at least 200 kilometers, and in some places it may even be 300 kilometers.

“Ships have to turn continuously during navigation, and most of the time they are adjusting their directions during the entire route.

“Even if there are steam engines to drive ships, the actual navigation efficiency is much lower than that of the Yangtze River waterway. In the future, it would be best to straighten the overly tortuous river channels.

“Secondly, the location of the lower reaches of this great river is actually not completely fixed.

"Compared to the Yangtze River, the Great River is more like the Yellow River with a larger volume of water, and it is an untamed Yellow River.

“Although because of the large amount of water, when the river continues to flow, it will continue to erode downward on the plain and expand the river channel, so it will not form an above-ground river.

“But the huge amount of water in the river, flowing on the relatively flat plains, will naturally flood.

"The situation in the middle and upper reaches is relatively better, as the drop in the main stream of the river is greater than that in the lower reaches.

"The river channel has eroded a trough-shaped river valley mudflat area that is five to six kilometers wide and more than ten meters deep. Floods will be confined to the river valley.

“As long as the site for the development of military farms is selected on the terrace outside the river channel, and settlements are not built on the mudflats in the trough-shaped river valley, they will basically not be affected by floods.

“But when you get to the lower reaches, the width of the river valley increases to dozens of kilometers, and in some places it even exceeds 100 kilometers.

“This area is 600 to 700 kilometers long, and the total area is estimated to be more than 60,000 square kilometers.

"That's almost the size of half of the province in the Ming dynasty, and it's all flat, fertile riverbeds with abundant water resources, which can be reclaimed into tens of millions of acres of paddy fields.

“But in the seven years since we’ve been in North America, there have been two major floods along this stretch of river.

"The raging floodwaters broke out of the river channel and flowed freely across tens of thousands of square kilometers of riverbeds.

“At that time, we couldn’t even find where the main body of the river was.

"If we can't build levees to control the river's course, these tens of thousands of square kilometers of riverbanks will become swamps, and there will be no way to build farmlands."

(An illustration from a geography textbook showing a trough-shaped river valley formed by the erosion of the riverbed and riverbank.)
(Except for the source rivers located in the mountain valleys, most of the major rivers in North America have the shape shown in the third figure.)
Zhu Jianxuan listened to Zhang Xu's complaints and recalled what he had learned in his previous life. The Mississippi River, which is now called the Great River of North America by the people of the Ming Dynasty, is a very representative river.

A river with a relatively large runoff volume that developed on the great plains without human interference.

The state of the river channel and valley is highly consistent with the theoretical state described in geography textbooks.

The river itself is highly sinuous, like a rope that is repeatedly folded and piled into a ball.

A very standard "trough" shaped river valley was also formed.

This "trough" in the middle and upper reaches of North American rivers is 20 to 30 meters deep in places and about 10 meters shallow in places.

This trough-shaped river valley is the natural flood discharge area of ​​North America's major rivers.

Without human intervention, floods can spread here without restraint.

In the downstream areas where precipitation is relatively high, the entire river valley is a long and narrow strip of swamps and mudflats.

If you want to build a settlement on the river bank, you can only choose the high ground outside the valley.

If you still want to get water from the river conveniently, you have to choose a place where the river bends to the extreme point, right next to the edge of the riverbed.

In the past, cities such as Memphis, St. Louis, and Baton Rouge were basically in places like this.

The five development areas selected by Daming are now also at such nodes.

Just as Zhang Xu said, the situation in the upper and middle reaches of the river is not bad. The river valley is only a few kilometers wide, so it is acceptable to use it as a flood discharge area.

But the downstream area covers tens of thousands of square kilometers, where there are tens of millions of acres of potential fertile land.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of people in the world, whether nobles or commoners, were essentially farmers and had a strong desire for land.

Therefore, neither the European immigrants in the United States nor the immigrants in the Ming Dynasty wanted to use tens of millions of acres of land as flood discharge areas.

Zhang Xu's proposal for the management of North America's major rivers is based on traditional experience.

The winding river channels were straightened, and large levees were built on both sides of the overly wide downstream riverbeds to restrict the courses of the major North American rivers.

This is what Americans have done throughout history.

The original colonists began building levees in New Orleans before the founding of the United States.

In the two hundred years since the founding of the country, the Americans have built river embankments and protective dikes for riverside settlements, with a total length of more than 3,000 kilometers.

But according to Zhu Jianxuan's experience, the Americans have not been able to fundamentally solve the flooding problem of this major North American river.

Straightening the ship is indeed beneficial to shipping.

However, it will also increase the speed of water flow, and the flood will leave the local area faster, but will reach the downstream faster, making the flood downstream more serious.

Building a levee is also only a temporary solution and may even have a counterproductive effect.

Once an exceptional flood occurs and the levees are breached by the flood, the damage caused by the flooding will be extremely serious.

Some parts of the lower reaches of North America's major rivers have been turned into surface rivers by the Americans.

The great river of North America is the Yellow River with a flow rate ten times greater.

Most of the vast North American Great Plains were formed by the erosion and accumulation of the North American rivers. The Yellow River is relatively well-behaved in front of them.

After all, no matter how much the Yellow River floods, the flow rate is only 50 to 60 billion cubic meters, so it will only be that serious.

The flow of the great rivers of North America is 580 billion.

The amount of water in the large rivers is enormous, and the frequent extreme climates on the Great Plains of North America cause the annual runoff of the large rivers to vary greatly.

It is easy to have an out-of-specification flood.

(The largest flood area in the lower Mississippi River flood is the area with a different color from the surrounding area.)
Zhu Jianxuan recalled what he had learned in his previous life, and decided that he should not mess with the river in the same way now:
“It is better to leave the land on the downstream riverbank uncultivated for now, as the workload of its management and development is too huge.

“Even outside the river beach area, there is still enough land waiting for us to develop. There is no need to specifically deal with the swamps on the river beach now.

“When there is really not enough land outside, it will not be too late to consider whether to develop this river beach.

"It is best not to carry out projects to straighten the river. Although such projects may seem to be beneficial for navigation, they will increase the destructive power of floods downstream.

“It would be better to try to build a dam in the river channel and turn the trough-shaped valley into a long and narrow water storage reservoir for water storage, flood control and irrigation.

"This way, the entire river valley will be filled with water, which is equivalent to straightening the entire river valley and turning it into a giant canal.

"Of course, it can also be used for direct navigation. A giant canal with a width of several kilometers and a depth of ten meters can have a transportation efficiency close to that of sea transportation."

Zhang Xu's ideas for managing the major rivers in North America are all based on the most traditional river management experiences and are natural approaches.

So Zhu Jianxuan's direct refusal now surprised everyone.

But what Zhu Jianxuan said does make sense.

There is enough land in North America now, so there is no need to bother with that swampy river beach.

At the same time, Zhu Jianxuan now gives people the impression that he doesn't care much about the land.

The traditional Shenzhou nobles’ desire and stinginess for land should have been innate.

But Zhu Jianxuan doesn't seem to have such desire.

It is probably because of this way of thinking that the idea of ​​turning the entire river valley into a reservoir came about.

Ordinary nobles and peasants would think of developing the river valley into farmland.

Compared with this typical peasant mentality that is taken for granted, Zhu Jianxuan's ideas seem so grand that they make people feel too extravagant.

"Don't do any minor repairs to straighten the river. Just turn the entire valley into a reservoir and a canal."

The trough-shaped valleys cut by the great rivers on the Great Plains are indeed very suitable for becoming reservoirs and canals, and this is exactly the kind of thing that can be done in such a wild land as North America.

The river valleys of the Old World are the best farmlands and have long been densely populated areas, so there is no way to do this.

The transportation capacity of this super canal is indeed as terrifying as one can imagine.

It's really no different from the shallow sea.

Zhang Xu was stunned for several seconds, then said with a surprised expression:

"Your Highness's plan is brilliant. I will send someone to survey and plan as soon as I get back.

“However, it should only be suitable for the middle and upper reaches, and the lower reaches of large rivers are still quite troublesome.

“We can’t fill river valleys that are tens or hundreds of kilometers wide with water.

"That would be such a waste of land..."

Zhu Jianxuan thought for a moment and said:
“The downstream is indeed difficult to manage, and the width of hundreds of kilometers is indeed too exaggerated, but there is no need to rush to manage it.

"During the slack season, we can first build dams and reclaim fields in small areas on the edges of the river valley and in the areas where the tributaries are located, and gradually reduce the scope of the river valley.

"There is no need to rush. We should aim to gradually reduce the width of the river valley to more than ten kilometers over the next few decades or even hundreds of years.

"These dozen kilometers will be used as the final flood discharge area, reservoir and canal..."

(End of this chapter)