At the end of September 1788, Su Chong'a, who came from the Ningguta prisoner of war camp, stood on the deck of the Thor, looking at the continent that was retreating, and his heart became increasingly sad and desolate.
As a Manchu who had never seen the sea and could not swim, Su Chong'a felt that he had given up his life, and I was afraid he would never return to Shenyang. His surname is "Cai", his ancestors are Han Chinese and they have lived in Shenyang. Since the Jin Dynasty occupied Shenyang at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and during the Huang Taiji era, they changed their surname from Chai to Manchu.
In August, according to the order of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Beihai Town, some Manchu and Eight Banners prisoners of war were selected from the Qing army prisoners in Ningguta and sent to Heishi Town on Kuye Island for labor service. Due to the current manpower shortage in Beihai Town, the number of escorts and guards is limited, so the first batch of people is only 500.
As soon as the news came out, some of the Qing prisoners suddenly felt panic. Many people wonder why the treatment they received from Dashuai Fu is different from before. The last time the prisoners of the Qing army had basically done no hard work except digging a trench in the cold weather, they had been stuck in a cellar all winter. Apart from doing roll call every day, there was no heavy work. Although the food was average, it was said that there were also ditties. listen.
Now it's our turn. Look, what kind of days are these? Not to mention moving rocks, cutting down trees and digging soil every day, the living conditions are not good. What's going on, you're sending us to a deserted island to do hard labor?
joke! The first batch requires money exchange. And it was winter at that time, so it was not enough trouble for these people to go out and chop wood. So at that time, Zhao Xin simply deducted money from rations and maintained the minimum food supply standard, as long as he didn't starve to death.
Beihai Town does not plan to release these captives now. The Ministry of Civil Affairs plans to let these prisoners become permanent residents of Kuye Island after their hard labor period expires.
This place, Blackstone Town, is actually the location of Alexandrovsk in later generations. Ding Guofeng had visited this place once before, and later the Civil Affairs Bureau sent a group of people to plan the site. At that time, according to Mergu'a, there was an ancient city ruins there called Yidu City. Afterwards, he returned to Beihai Town to look through the information and found out that it was the former site of the ancient city of the Jin Dynasty. Since there is an old site, it is a good use, so the Ministry of Civil Affairs chose this location in the southwest of Kuye Island.
The Thor first arrived at Dabo Town at the southernmost tip of Kuye Island, unloaded some supplies, stayed for a night before setting off again, heading north along the strait between the Outer Northeastern Continent and Kuye Island.
This strait was called the "Tatar Strait" in later generations, and the islanders called it the "Mamiya Strait". In fact, since the Yuan Dynasty, it and the Sea of Japan have been collectively referred to as the "Sea of Whales" in the classics of the Central Dynasty.
Count Laperouse, who was visiting Beihai Town, originally sailed north from here, hoping to find a passage from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk.
However, because the mayor of Dabo Town, Jiang Tenglin, was too clever and did not tell them the truth, the French went further north and found that the strait became shallower; basically, for every mile northward, the water depth decreased by 2 meters. When they reached the water depth of only 20 meters, they no longer dared to leave. In fact, the shallowest part of the Tartar Strait is only seven meters. Not to mention the French, Beihai Town's own ship cannot pass through.
Seeing the sea floor gradually increasing, the water in the strait was almost motionless, making the French mistakenly believe that this was not a strait but a bay. So on the map they drew, Kuye 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 along the east coast of Kuye Island to Okhotsk.
When they passed the town of Oja, the French also saw billowing black smoke from the refinery on the shore from the ship. The French who didn't know what was going on wanted to go ashore for inspection, but Zhang Bo refused. Count Laperouse thought of the coastal defense artillery he had seen in Dabo Town (Beihai Town produced its own 75mm artillery, with a range of 6,500 meters), and then gave up the idea of forcibly landing.
On the Tartar Strait in winter, the spectacle of whales spraying water and swimming around attracted many Qing prisoners of war. They came to the deck and pointed and marveled.
However, the superficial happiness cannot cover up the depression in these people's hearts. In fact, the further away the Thor is from the mainland, the more desperate these people feel. If they hadn't been strung together in groups of five with shackles on their feet, some of them might have jumped into the sea and committed suicide.
The Thor stopped on the sea one kilometer away from Blackstone Town. On the sea not far from the shore, several rocks stand abruptly. At this time, the sea was filled with fog, and the three largest rocks were like black steel forks in the hands of the devil; this scene made the Qing prisoners on the ship feel like they were in hell, and one young prisoner even started crying.
The sailor on the deck laughed and said: "Coward, what is there to be afraid of! Let me tell you, the oysters here are so fat, you can easily pick up the ones as long as your forearms on the beach. When you come here, you will not be afraid of it all year round. Lack of meat to eat.”
Su Chong'a wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, thinking that the weather was so cold, and if he picked seafood with his bare feet in the water, he would still get sick from the cold.
While the barge was being lowered, the prisoners lined up on the deck under the orders of the soldiers. The barge that comes with the Thor is not big and can only seat twenty people at a time. In addition to the prisoners, there are also a lot of supplies that need to be transported to the shore. When the last shipment of supplies arrived at the beach, the sky was already dark.
The prisoners spent their first night in a tent around a campfire. In addition to the hooting of owls, the howling of wolves could also be heard faintly around the camp.
They were woken up by the whistle the next morning, and one by one they walked out of the tent shivering and completed the roll call, then began to have breakfast. Su Chong'a was sipping hot stick noodle porridge while looking at this strange place.
The place where they are currently camping is still more than four miles away from the old site of Yidui City, but as the first batch of settlers here, Su Chong'a and their labors have to start here first.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs has already sent people to inspect the location of the campsite in advance, and chose it in an open space only one mile away from the coast. The area is about the size of three football fields. The surrounding area has been marked with wooden poles over one meter high. .
These Qing army prisoners had been building the road from Ninggu Pagoda to Fuldan City in the past few months, so they were already very familiar with how to use various tools produced in Beihai Town. The team of 500 people was divided into ten teams, each team was guarded by a squad of Beihai navy.
The job of Su Chong'a's team was to cut wood in the lower reaches of the Yidu River. After the group arrived here carrying tools, he first dug a shovel of soil, leaned down, grabbed a handful and rubbed it twice in his hands. . The light brown soil is sticky and slippery in the hand, and there are a lot of gravels.
A man in his thirties next to him came over, grabbed a handful of soil, looked at it and said, "This land is too bad. I'm afraid I won't be able to grow crops."
Su Chong'a asked curiously: "Have you ever planted land?"
Guy Na said: "Why haven't you planted it before? My family is from Liaoyang. Before I went out to serve in the army, I followed my mother to pick up crops. If you want to grow food on this land, you must first drain it and then plow it deeply. In the second year Only then can we sow seeds.”
Su Chong'a has never farmed. His family has been serving as soldiers to provide food for his ancestors, and the dozens of acres of land in his family are cultivated by tenants.
While the two were working, they would chat a few words to pass the time. 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 ancestors were kidnapped from Pyongyang to Liaoyang due to war and settled there ever since. Their group was called "Cen" in the Manchu surname. His great-grandfather was the deputy general of Yonggu, Shaanxi Province, and wore a " Cavalry Captain".
The prisoners were working here, and the Beihai navy who was guarding them was not idle either. The battalion commander who led the team asked a few soldiers with good marksmanship to go hunting in the woods, and occasionally they could hear a gunshot. By noon, they actually shot two deer, which made a group of captives overjoyed.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs set a labor service period of three years for these prisoners. After the expiration of the period, they could stay and settle locally, or be allocated fifty acres of farmland in the southern part of Kuye Island. By then, if the North Navy captures the entire Northeast, they can also take over their families. With such hope, the prisoners became much more active in their work.
As for Kuye Island, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has comprehensive considerations for 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, Blackstone Town has no agricultural prospects at all. The main reason is that due to the natural conditions of the Yidui River and Adangji River Valley, and being sandwiched by mountains on both sides, there is too little area available for reclamation. As for developing along the coast, don't bother with that.
In another history, due to the barrenness of the local land, many farmers who came here from Tsarist Russia in the 19th century cleared the land and built farms, but many left within a few years. The reason couldn't be simpler. Crops cannot be grown at all. Even potatoes are not enough to eat.
Therefore, Blackstone Town is suitable as a labor base for prisoners of the Qing army. When their labor period expires, they will be assigned to farm in the plain area east of Dabo Town or to the north to raise livestock, and then they will be mixed with some The refugees in the pass and the naturalized people of the island country, the entire Kuye Island is considered occupied.
As for the southern part of Bitter Leaf Island, although the plains are open, there are also many swamps. It will definitely take a lot of effort to transform it into an agricultural area.
If the swampland is to be transformed into a field suitable for farming, it must be mechanically dug and ridged for drainage, which will increase the ground temperature, increase the temperature difference and increase the activity of aerobic microorganisms; and then fertilize to reduce organic matter and change the pH. Only by making the land "out of swamps and into soil" can we value it.
Even in modern times, it is no exaggeration to say that it would take at least ten years to improve a swamp area and turn it into highly productive farmland.
This is not at all like a modern person who can turn wasteland into fertile farmland with a wave of his hand or a command.
Stop talking about potatoes and sweet potatoes. Whether they are Chinese or foreign farmers, when they come to a strange land and find that the harvest of their staple food crops is not good, they will be eager to leave this place. If farmers cannot be retained, agriculture will not develop, and it will be difficult for emerging immigrant towns to develop.
In agricultural societies, farmers’ stubborn mentality towards 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 acre. In the life he has heard about since he was a child, that stuff 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?
To this day, islanders eat dumplings or ramen as side dishes with rice, which shows that rice as a staple food has been deeply engraved in their genes. In the same way, to this day, Chinese people have not heard of anyone wanting to eat potatoes or sweet potatoes when they are hungry. They are things that are only changed occasionally when they are tired of the staple food. Grains as the staple food have long been imprinted on the Chinese people. in the bones.
With the tools at hand and plenty of food, the prisoner team's work at the Blackstone Town landing site was progressing pretty well. But for people like Su Chonga, the labor in Blackstone Town is really hard!
Their logging area is mainly in the lower reaches of the Yidu River. The width of the river here is up to 20 to 30 meters. The low-lying areas on both sides are covered with towering trees. Fir, larch, alder, and willow trees grow densely, surrounded by a forest. A muddy swamp. In addition to the tall trees, there are often huge, semi-rotted trees lying on the ground in the forest, and they all need to be cleaned up. Some of these trees have fallen due to old age, while others have been overturned by storms. There are often moss-covered mounds next to the roots of fallen trees, and next to the mounds are pits and deep ditches.
While logging, the prisoners also had to cut grass everywhere and bundle it into bundles to fill the swamps and deep ditches. Only in this way can the cut wood be transported out of the forest.
After three or four days of such work, the prisoners were exhausted. They were all listless, with gloomy faces. They got into their tents and fell asleep after work every day.
By the end of the first week, they had dug a septic tank with a side length of 20 meters and a depth of three meters, built temporary toilets, cleared an area the size of four basketball courts, and used chopped wooden stakes to clear it. It was surrounded to ward off wild beasts; two wooden columns had been erected, and they are currently used as warehouses; in addition, the prisoners, under the guidance of the soldiers of the Northern Navy, built a T tower about three meters high that extended into the sea. The zigzag pier has begun to take shape.
In the second week, the Thor sent another thousand prisoners of war and a batch of supplies. The number of manpower has tripled, and the construction progress of the entire camp has accelerated.
As snow began to fall in Blackstone 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 bright, and the prisoners worked until 11 or 2 o'clock in the evening before getting into the tents to rest, and then got up to work again early the next morning.
Compared with the wet cellars where the prisoners lived along the Ninggu Pagoda Road, the residence Su Chonga and his companions built in Heishi Town was much better. The floors in wooden houses are at least one foot high from the ground, which can effectively insulate cold and moisture. Beihai Town's almost strict health management has prevented the prisoners from having large-scale outbreaks of dysentery or other infections so far.
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