Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1379 The Treaty of Versailles

Chapter 1379 The Treaty of Versailles ([-])
Someone once commented on the gold rush in the American West in history.

Because of the distance, so romantic.

Because it is near, it can be reached.

Romance means anarchic chaos, absurdity, and magic.

Arrival means that there is a large population nearby, as well as a large number of miners who are eager to get rich before the gold rush, and they can arrive after a little tidying up.

The absurdity and magic of the western gold rush in history created romance.

For example, because of gold panning in a bitterly cold place, and because of the large number of miners who went there first and then the agricultural production, the eggs in the mining area are worth a penny of gold. All the eggs were bought and smashed, because the beauty he fancied was having dinner with someone else, and the person who invited her to dinner invited the lady to eat boiled eggs.

Historically, the western gold rush was far enough away from the settlements at the time to create a spontaneous frenzy.

For example, the more than 4000 Chinese miners in San Francisco heard that there is gold in the north, packed their bags a little, and then embarked on a journey of digging for gold and headed straight to Vancouver. .

But now, the gold rush planned by Dashun will be neither so far nor too close; neither will it be romantic enough, nor will it be so close.

It should be said that the immigrant and reclamation activities driven by the gold rush started by Dashun are "unworthy of" the word "gold rush" with many "romantic" and "magical" things.

But as Lao Ma once commented, the gold rush had a greater impact on the world at that time than the February Revolution in France.

This evaluation, Dashun's start of the gold rush activity also deserves it.

The technology of the steam engine has already sprouted, and now Dashun urgently needs a large amount of precious metal currencies such as gold and silver to invest in industry, mining, infrastructure, Indian planting, and cotton yarn.

It is still too slow to rely solely on absorbing gold and silver from Europe.Because Liu Yu's steps are too big, with the end of the war against Europe and the completion of the expansion period, such a big step, if the capital chain is broken halfway, it will definitely be a mess.

And the first step to prevent pulling eggs is to complete the exploration of gold mines in the later "North American wheat and animal husbandry mixed agricultural belt".

At this time, on the west coast of North America, a group of prospectors sent by Dashun, led by several Haida guides, were going up the river in the later Vancouver area.

Haida people and Dashun have been trading for many years. The high profits of Hailong leather, the development of Dashun handicraft industry, and the cowpox cross-ocean relay have made the relationship between Haida people and Dashun fur dealers quite close. good.

The Russian Cossacks are scarce in terms of commodity exchange, and they have nothing to exchange for, so they can only kill and rob.On Dashun's side, a foot of cloth and a red-headed rope can exchange a group of women to go to the mountains to collect berries that are resistant to scurvy, not to mention the lucrative business of exchanging wine for sea dragon skins.

With the deepening of the transaction, the Haida people finally discovered a good thing-it turned out that gold, which they didn't pay much attention to and was just used as a decoration for fun, could be exchanged for so many things?A Haida man took a piece of dog's head gold weighing more than six catties, and exchanged it from a Dashun merchant for about four large barrels of sorghum wine, half a carload of blankets, a barrel of dates, a large bag of sugar, and some preserved fruits.

And the people in Dashun, following the gold in the hands of the Haida people, began to head up the river to search for the existence of gold mines.

There are about 60 people in the prospecting team, some of them have participated in the previous Yukon River gold panning.

There, the wisdom of the working people is fully displayed.

The gold diggers in Dashun relied on the permafrost of the Yukon River and set fire to the permafrost to get gold sand.

Because of the presence of permafrost, they do not need the support structures required to build mines.

Relying on this stupid method, mining gold in sparsely populated places like the Yukon River is still very profitable, because there is no need for a huge number of people to chop wood, build mine support frames, and so on.

The environment there is of course harsh, at least much worse than here.

Since it is bitter before sweet, these people who survived the Yukon River naturally regard the environment here as a paradise.

Vancouver, look at the name, you know that most of the people who discovered here in history were Dutch.Wen Zhe is probably another transliteration of Fan in the Netherlands, VAN.

But in the Haida language, it should be called Maple Grove.

Just like the Batavia called by the Dutch, it was renamed Coconut Grove City.

This city, which should have been called Vancouver in history, has now been renamed Maplewood Bay.

Maple, means temperate.

The temperate zone means that it is not as scary as the tropics. Venomous snakes, insects, malaria, fever, etc. are nothing compared to the tropics.

Maple trees also mean that wheat, soybeans, corn...even peanuts and rice can be grown here.

Of course, it also means that there are four distinct seasons here.

For a group of people who originated in the Central Plains, places with four distinct seasons are undoubtedly full of attraction.

In the prospecting team of more than 60 people, in addition to prospecting, there are also some responsible for map drawing and longitude and latitude measurement.

They set off from Fenglin Bay, where many people had gathered and the town had just formed, and were going to go up the river.

It's not easy to start in autumn, because Fenglin Bay starts to rain in autumn, and it doesn't stop.

It's not cold in winter, but it rains all the time.

It also happened to take advantage of the winter rainy season to stick autumn fat here, and wait for the spring rain to stop next year before we can start.

The small town of Fenglin Bay now has a population of more than 600, and less than half of them are Haida women who married or Haida men who joined the company. The fur company is the trading base here, so a typical Chinese-style trading town has emerged here.

The main reason is that gold mines have been discovered on Haida Gwaii Island in the north. The previous gold mining on Haida Gwaii Island has led Dashun to try the model of "selling state-owned land in blocks" , Let some gold diggers settle here and start farming.

The landlord-tenant model is of course unacceptable, because even if the landlord has the money to buy tens of thousands of acres of land, if he does not dig gold, he can earn back the money for the boat ticket in 100 years by farming the land.

It is said that if you have a front and back view, you should know that this place will be prosperous in the future, and you will be the owner early.However, no one is willing to make this kind of investment for more than 50 years, and Dashun does not allow it at all-there can and can only be one landlord, and it is a super-large landlord, and that is the imperial court.

Now when we cultivate here, we have to pay land tax, but it is all tax in kind for the use of the school.

Some young people from the Yan-Li School also came here to practice the Yan-Li School in accordance with their imagined "Utopia".

Township covenant, school, militia, tenth tax, land ban, etc.

not bad.The main thing is that this place lacks ideal cultural people.

Of course, there is exile in Dashun. Many officials make mistakes and basically go to exile for sentence, but generally they don't go to this kind of place.

The main reason is that Dashun knows what its core is, and also knows that its basic market is China.

Therefore, as a cultural class, these literati and bureaucrats were thrown into exile either in the Western Regions or in Heilongjiang, which can be regarded as "waste utilization", thereby increasing the cultural inheritance there and increasing the centripetal force of the frontier.

Like the hell joke under the Manchu Qing rule, the place with the highest per capita diploma in the north is actually Ninggu Pagoda...

It is impossible for Dashun to throw the "precious" criminal scholar-bureaucrats here across the ocean.

The advantage is that the Yan Li School, which emphasizes the six arts and neglects the scriptures, is mixed here with practical learning and new learning. It is not possible to learn one art and half art, learn medicine, learn funeral management, learn red and funeral affairs, learn farming, and learn blacksmithing".

In these years, the weather has been smooth and the people have been in good health. It looks like a rule of three generations.

Of course, the main reason is the large amount of land, because an important factor that suppresses the development of Dashun's productivity is that too little land prevents each labor force from exerting its labor potential.Obviously, in terms of technology, experience, and hard work, a labor force has no pressure to plant [-] to [-] acres of land, but is limited by the means of production, and can only roll back and forth on those [-] to [-] acres of land.

The life of the prospecting team here is quite good. There is no shortage of food or meat here, but some handicrafts are missing.

The meaning of currency here is not too great, or it has been seriously distorted, so the prospecting team can use some cotton cloth here to exchange enough food for autumn fat.

The autumn rain never stops. Compared with the war on the other side of the Americas, the years here are so quiet that many people lie on the windows, cursing at the dripping raindrops, which is unbearable.

"If this goes on like this, the whole body will grow hair."

Amidst such complaints, the weather lasted until the third day of the third lunar month in the second year, when the sky finally cleared up.

Like almost all Han villages, when the prospecting team finally set off, the people in front of and behind the houses were busy growing vegetables.

On March [-]rd, plant peppers, eggplants, okra, shepherd's purse, potherb mustard, lettuce, carrots...

Farm songs are sung, full of charm.

Those in the prospecting team who have been in the Yukon River for many years, watching this scene of busy planting vegetables in spring, are full of emotion.

"At least, when you pan for gold here in the future, you can eat it. You know, how much gold does a big white radish cost when panning for gold in the north?"

"There is no shortage of meat over there, but there are really few vegetables. That's where my teeth fell out..."

A person in the prospecting team opened his mouth while speaking, revealing his teeth that had fallen out due to scurvy.

"Why don't you have a gold tooth?"

The young man in charge of surveying and mapping in the prospecting team asked curiously. Dashun's dentistry is quite advanced. The Ryukyu Kingdom came here to study medicine a long time ago, and many of them studied dentistry.Nowadays, there are not many people in Dashun who travel abroad with good teeth, but here, big gold teeth are even more common.

The one with bad teeth said, "I can't bear it. I'm not a bachelor. I'm a brother, sister, three aunts and six uncles. If I can help to bring them here, wouldn't it be better than living in my hometown? Why did I go to Guandong in the early years? It’s not that I can’t live anymore, I know that I’m going to the Kanto to dig for gold and I’m close to death, but how can I survive with that little land?”

"I'm close to death in mining. I don't plan to let my relatives come here to dig gold. It's better to get some land and plant it here. Near the mining area, plant some vegetables and exchange for gold. Isn't that better than being a mine mouse?"

"This gold digger needs to be supported by three or five people. There must be a farmer? A vegetable grower? A tailor? A wine seller? A kiln shop? I said, unless you really can’t survive, don’t dig for gold, it’s better to go to school to learn a craft. Learn a blacksmith or a tailor, that’s the job for a lifetime.”

"Gold diggers... Hey, one rich and nine poor died. There are many ways in it. Betrayed by friends, murdered in partnership, suffocated by deliberately blocking holes, hiding gold in the eyes of the buttocks, being caught and kidnapped Let the gadfly suck it dry on the tree... This place is so high in the sky and the emperor is far away, it is so ineffective every day, you young children, how do you understand?"

A prospector full of bad teeth perfectly interprets the word "romantic" in the word "romantic gold rush".

(End of this chapter)

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