Two days later, amidst the barking of dogs, the hunter from Kaphyaka who had spied on Zhao Xin and others ran out of breath into a village on the north bank of the upper reaches of the Tatama River on Bitterleaf Island.
It is said to be a village, but in fact there are only seven or eight households in total.
The houses of these people are all made of pine or fir, and most of the houses are no more than five or six rooms deep (the distance between two pillars is one room). There are doors and windows on all sides of the house for lighting, and the roof is covered with birch bark and covered with thick weeds. There are some logs crisscrossing the weeds.
The hunter ran all the way and came to a house in the middle of the village. This home is different from other homes at first glance. The house is much larger than other homes. In addition to the main house, there is a small wooden house next to it that is used as a warehouse.
Entering the house, I saw a family of four sitting on a stone fire pit and eating with bowls in their hands. In the center of the house there is a large shelf with food and various daily utensils stacked on it. On the edge of the scaffolding, a rope hung from the roof. One end of the rope tied a wooden board to a one-year-old baby. Although the child's hands and feet were tied and unable to move, he did not cry and swayed along with the wooden board. Beneath the child, a tub for peeing was placed on the floor.
"Mergu, something happened! Island, a group of weirdos came to the island!"
The man named Mergua paused after hearing this and put down the wooden bowl in his hand. This person is the chief of this village, and he is also Kalada (surnamed Chang) appointed by Qing officials.
"Senbachul, let's take a sip of the hot soup first and take a breather before talking." The hostess stood up, filled more than half of the bowl of "Shaxi Trout Soup" with the man's wooden bowl, and handed it to the hunter.
The so-called "Xiaxi" is a local seaweed-like thing. The Fyaka cook this seaweed with finely sliced wild onions and wild garlic, along with trout. Because of the rough preparation, this soup tastes slimy, but it has a salty taste.
Sembakul took the wooden bowl and drank it in big gulps. Then he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, handed the wooden bowl to Meier's ancient wife, and then said: "Two days ago, I chased a red deer and ran to the Oha River. As a result, I saw it coming from the mouth of the river. Four huge strange ships are coming.”
(Note: Oha River or Pirentu River are the two names of the Kuhayakians and Manchus. Oha comes from the Ainu language. Hereinafter, it is called the Oha River.)
Mergu'a frowned and said, "Strange ship? How big is it?"
"That ship must be there, it must be there." Sembakul stretched out his arms and gestured, but found that it was still not enough to describe. So he simply said: "The two largest boats are five times as big as your room, just like two hills! The other two smaller ones are also two times as big as this room! And the hulls of the boats are so tall, they are bigger than Your roof is much higher."
"What!" Mergu'a was stunned for a moment. Based on his knowledge, he felt that the government ships he had seen when he went to Deleng Enmu City in previous years were very big ships.
Just listen to Sembakul continue: "There are no sails on those boats. When they move, they make roars, like thunder in the sky! There is a big transparent room on top of the boats, which is full of people."
"Is he someone sent by the government? Did you see clearly?"
"I've seen people from the government, and their clothes are completely different from those people! The most terrifying thing is that there is a person inside, him, him, him"
"What's wrong with him? Tell me quickly!"
"After those people got off the boat, they walked towards the west, but a few guys stayed, and there was a woman inside. One of them walked up to the four boats and waved his hand, and the boats were gone!! "
As soon as these words came out, Mergu'a and his family were all dumbfounded.
immortal? devil?
In the eighteenth century, the Feyaka people's original beliefs were still at the stage of worshiping natural things. In addition to animal worship and worship of ancestor gods, they were also influenced by shamanism from the mainland.
They believe in mountain gods, sea gods and fire gods, and worship bear gods, whale gods and fish gods. The Feyaka people believe that the bear god was transformed into a dog under the mountain god, while the whale god and the fish god were at the disposal of the sea god.
Because of the influence of shamanism, the Feyaka people believe that human illness is caused by the devil, and they can exorcise evil spirits and cure diseases through shamanic practices. However, because shamanism was gradually introduced in the later period, in the traditional concept of the Feyaka people, they believe that the most powerful person to protect their clan is the bear god, the henchman of the mountain god.
Mergu was stunned for a while and suddenly asked: "What do those people look like? Do they have red hair?"
Sembakul shook his head and said, "No. I looked carefully and there was no one with red hair. They all had black hair and white skin. They looked paler than the Manchus on the other side." He recalled it. , continued: "However, the man who lost the boat and one of his companions looked very tall and powerful, especially the other man, who was as strong as a bear."
"Bear?! You said that bear-like person is that mage's subordinate?" Mergu'a's eyes lit up.
"That's right! That man is extremely tall and burly. From a distance, he looks like a big brown bear!"
Mergu'a slapped his thigh and said to Sembakul: "Gather the men immediately, bring weapons and dry food, and let's go take a look."
At the same time, the Thunderbolt driven by Deng Fei had arrived at the outlet of the Oha River. Because the 250-meter-long hull of the Thunderbolt was too large, Deng Fei and the others did not dare to drive in. They found an area with gentle water flow and anchored, and first used a walkie-talkie to communicate.
At this time, Zhao Xin had not returned yet, and Liu Sheng, who received the walkie-talkie signal, immediately explained the situation. Hearing that the oil field had been found, Deng Fei was also very happy, so he began to make arrangements for people to go ashore; when Zhao Xin came back, he immediately started landing.
This time, the Thunder brought a company of soldiers from Beihai Town, as well as 3,000 refugees from Henan. These people, with their families, had been on the sea for two days, and when they heard that they had arrived at their destination, they all looked at the big island with great curiosity.
"Daddy, it's very cold here!"
"Yeah, luckily I got a green blanket before I came here. Take it out and put it on quickly."
"Dad, do you think we can grow sorghum in this land?"
"Why are we growing sorghum? The master asked us to come here to dig for oil."
"If you dig out oil, you have to make people eat food!"
On the other side of the deck, Mrs. Hu Liu and her daughter Niuniu were wrapped in a big blanket and looking at the land in the distance.
"Girl, are you cold?"
"It's just that the wind is too strong." Niu Niu raised her hands to cover her face, turned to her mother and asked, "Mom, I want to play with Cong Niang."
"I just know how to play. If my mother hadn't signed up to cook here, I would have been studying in school right now."
"Mom, do you think there will be a school here?"
"The masters said that after each house is built, a school will be built first. Remember, when you go to school, you must respect your teacher and don't be naughty."
"I remember."
Mrs. Hu Liu was the widow who once took a boat to Beihai Town with Mrs. Wang Li. In order to earn a high salary of 20 yuan per month, this woman specially signed up to go north and took her daughter Niuniu to Bitter Leaf Island. Her job will be to cook meals for workers on the construction site.
In order to ensure sufficient manpower in the Kuye Island oil field, the Ministry of Civil Affairs recruited refugees to go north this time and specially offered a minimum monthly salary of 20 yuan, which was euphemistically called a "low temperature subsidy." 20 Beihai Town silver dollars are equivalent to four taels of silver. Even if these refugees were in the hinterland of the Qing Dynasty, they would never see a single tael of silver in their lifetime (common people used coins to make daily living and pay taxes.)
This disappearance immediately caused a sensation among the refugees! However, although the salary of 20 yuan is high, it also comes at a price. The land allotment in Beihai Town is not enough; but in two years, we can be allocated fifty acres of cultivated land on the south bank of Xingkai Lake. Even so, the families who signed up were very enthusiastic, and in the end several residential areas were decided by drawing lots.
In the afternoon, Zhao Xin came back. This time he brought back all the equipment for oil extraction and replenished a batch of supplies, especially hoses and oil pumps for transporting oil.
Zhao Xin was also very happy to know that Deng Fei and the others had arrived. He asked Deng Fei to start arranging people to go ashore at dawn tomorrow. When it got dark, he went to the beach accompanied by Liu Sheng and "transformed" two catamaran passenger ships.
On Zhang Bo's side, the earthen kiln for oil refining has been set up, and the steel pipes for transporting oil everywhere are almost installed. Starting tomorrow, hundreds of migrant workers under him will go to cut down trees and make planks and firewood. The wooden boards will be made into a wooden box one meter long, half a meter wide and deep through mortise and tenon joints. A layer of putty will be applied on the inside and outside, and then it can be used to transport crude oil. The demand for firewood will be very large, because the fire cannot be stopped during oil refining. .
There is coal on Kuye Island, and they are all open-pit coal mines with amazing reserves. However, these lignite mines are located in the west of the island, and Zhao Xin cannot set foot in them yet.
One day later, the refugees on the Thunderbolt began to disembark one after another. As soon as they arrived at the camp, put down their luggage, and began to join the logging team.
It’s not possible without cutting down trees, otherwise there won’t even be enough room to stay at night.
Large tracts of larch trees were knocked down with shouts of warning, and the refugees who had been prepared rushed over with saws and axes, cut off the branches, and then slightly cleaned the rough bark on the surface. The man was dragged outside the lumberyard with a rope. The carpenters who had been waiting for a long time first cut the logs to the appropriate size, and then used tools to punch holes and grooves in the two sections of the logs.
The processed wood was immediately transported to the preset residential area, where someone had already dug the foundation and started laying bricks and stones. After a rough layer of mortar was applied to the masonry, others immediately began to stack wood around it; every two wood pieces were tightly connected with wooden wedges.
After the surrounding walls were built, the masons began to use quick-drying cement to plug the gaps between the wood, while others were responsible for adding the roof. Because the temperature here is low in winter and the wind and snow are heavy, the wooden corrugated roofs here are built high and wide.
When it got dark, some women had already prepared meals on the stove and delivered them to the construction site. The men continued to fight with lights on, illuminated by campfires and emergency lights. By almost nine o'clock in the evening, the construction of hundreds of wood-carved houses, which still exudes the moisture of wood and the strong smell of rosin, has been basically completed.
Everyone can only squeeze in for one night, and then work hard for a week, and the residential area will begin to take shape.
Two days later, as people scrambled for work day after day, the number of people in each woodcarving village gradually dropped from the initial thirty or forty to fifteen. When each family moves into their own house, the size of this residential area will reach more than 800 wooden houses. The original simple camp was gradually shrinking as wooden houses rose from the ground.
Three days later, Mergu'a arrived at the south of the residential area of Beihai Town with six of his men, holding daggers in their arms and holding bows and arrows. They did not go directly, but observed carefully in the bushes and woods in the distance.
Looking at the lively and noisy scene and people coming and going not far away, Mergua glared at Sembakul and said, "Didn't you say there are only a few hundred people?!"
Sembakul replied with a look of astonishment: "I saw hundreds of people that day! Who knows where these people came from!"
Mergu'a's original plan was to sneak over and attack him while the opponent was resting at night. Who would have thought that now the opponent's number was countless, how could he attack this thing? !
"Chief, look, there are women and children." A man with a good eye suddenly stretched out his hand and pointed to the opposite camp.
Mergu looked in the direction pointed by his men and saw several women leading a group of children outside the wooden house in the distance, as if they were doing some work.
This is trouble! According to Feyaka's customs, no matter what fault a woman has, she cannot be harmed easily. The living environment here is already bad enough. If we don't treat women who raise children and take care of the family as human beings, we won't be able to survive this life!
"Look again and see if they have a dog."
Like the Hezhe people, the people of Kuhafiyaka raise dogs in every household, and they raise them with even greater care. In a family, both men and women have dogs. There are also dogs of the father, the dog of the mother, the dog of the eldest son, and the dog of the second son. Everyone will keep three or five dogs.
Everyone looked around and observed for a long time. Sembakul even led one person to crawl to a position a hundred steps away from the opponent's camp, lying on the ground and listening carefully with his ears for a long time. Finally, I found that except for the sounds of people talking, the clanking of houses, and the unknown rumble of thunder, there was no sound of dogs barking at all. When he crawled back and told the others, everyone felt relieved. If the other party didn't have a dog, he wouldn't find himself hiding here to observe.
The sky was getting dark, and the seven Feyaka people were horrified to find that the camp opposite suddenly became like daylight. In addition to the blazing bonfire, dazzling lights actually emerged from several strange-shaped shelves! Under the illumination of these lights, those people continued to work during the day and worked tirelessly to build wooden houses.
"Are these people the messengers of God?" Sembakul swallowed a mouthful of saliva and asked stammeringly.
"What god? Mountain god, sea god or fire god?"
Several people talked about it, and some people said they were mountain gods, because they saw two burly, bear-like people. The one who can summon the bear god must be the mountain god. Two others said it was wrong. These people could make the night as bright as the day, and they must have been sent by the God of Fire. The last two said you are all scum! Sembakul said that he came by boat, so he must be the god of the sea.
The six of them were deadlocked, so they all turned their attention to Mergu, who had been silent for a long time, waiting for him to make a judgment.
Mergu Axin said that I don’t know what kind of god I am! You six scumbags!
He thought for a long time and felt that since the other party could bring so many women and children to the island, he would not be as vicious as those red-haired men. It is said that those red-haired people are very cruel. They kill everyone they see after landing, and the weapons in their hands are so powerful that the local Feyaka people cannot defeat them; Mergua himself is an example. At first, they were beaten to pieces by the red-haired men, and more than half of the more than 20 people died. In the end, they had to take the remaining villagers and flee to the south to settle down.
After hesitating for a long time, Mergua finally made a decision. He planned to go directly tomorrow and ask those people where they came from and what they were doing here. When he informed his subordinates of this decision, the six subordinates discussed it for a long time, but there was no good solution. But Sembakul’s words hit the mark. What if we could exchange something with the other party?
As soon as these words came out, the eyes of others suddenly lit up.
The reason why these Feyaka people think so is because the local living environment is so poor. Regardless of whether the locals are male or female, as long as they go out, whether for errands or fighting, they will definitely bring animal skins and other items with them, and whenever they seize the opportunity, they will find someone to negotiate business with in exchange for things. Otherwise, if officials from the Qing court came to recruit them, they would not agree so quickly.
Can I exchange something?
Can it be replaced? If I go there and pay a piece of mink skin, can I get some food?
Well, long live my emperor!
Oops, can I change into a python robe?
Oh my God, long live my emperor!
Just that little thing
(End of chapter)
