The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

Chapter 74: Exploring the Xinluo River and finally seeing its mouth!
River camp.

There are ten or twenty river boats next to the dock.

Liu Sheng boarded the largest ship through the trestle.

According to the introduction of the dock manager, this is a river boat with less than [-] pieces of material.

Liu Sheng only knew how many material ships there were in ancient times, which represented the materials used in shipbuilding, but he did not know how to calculate their relationship with the size and load of the ship, or that there was no formulaic numerical relationship between them.

The river boat in front of me is about 15 meters long, nearly four meters wide, with a pointed nose and square tail.The head and stern are slightly higher, each with a two-meter-long deck, almost flush with the side of the ship.

The entire ship is divided into five compartments. The middle section has a semi-cylindrical roof made of bamboo mats, supported by six wooden pillars.

There is a scull for one person at the stern, and there are six single oar positions in the middle of the hull. There is also a long bamboo pole on the bow.

According to the dock manager, if the river is not too fast, it can sail normally with a capacity of 30 people.Once there are more than 30 people, there is a danger of the boat capsizing.

In addition to this large river boat, there are five small river boats next to it, each of which is about ten meters long and nearly three meters wide.

There is no roof, and each boat can carry more than a dozen people.

There are also a dozen or so small fishing boats that can only seat three or five people.

Because many people in the expedition team were good at operating boats, and everyone could swim, Liu Sheng did not spend more time to let the expedition team become proficient in operating river boats.

He immediately took ten people on the big river boat, and asked another 40 people to take two small river boats and four small fishing boats. They took about three days' worth of dry food and other supplies and went to explore the lower reaches of the Luo River.

Five or six miles downstream, we soon reached the river facing Shangluobu.

Some natives from the Shangluo tribe were sitting in canoes, using pole nets, spears, and bows to fish in the shallow water near the river bank.

Seeing Huabu's riverboats floating on the river, these natives were dumbfounded on the spot, staring blankly at several riverboats going away, leaving only a few black spots, and then they came back to their senses.

"#%& (Are you from Huabu?)"

“@@& (I can see clearly it’s them!)”

"(But why did their ship change?)"

"(Not sure, go tell the chief!)"

"···"

Liu Sheng did not visit Shangluo.

Although it had only been a few months since he had made an agreement with the chief of the Luo tribe, there were now thousands of people in the Hua tribe, and they had already established themselves in North America, and they were no longer afraid of harassment by the natives.

If the Shangluo tribe is interested, they can live in peace with the Hua tribe for a long time, and even submit to the Hua tribe in the future.

But if the Shangluo tribe doesn't understand, the only option is to be destroyed by the Hua tribe and forcibly educated.

In any case, compared with the Indians in eastern, southern and South America, they are lucky.At least Liu Sheng and Hua Bu would not engage in inhumane genocide.

If they are willing to surrender, the Chinese Ministry will bring them countless benefits in the future.

After passing the Shangluo tribe and going downstream for about seven or eight miles, another tribe appeared by the river.

Liu Sheng stood on the bow of the ship and looked through the binoculars, and found that this tribe only had seventy or eighty houses, which was only slightly larger than the Shangluo tribe. It should be the Zhongluo tribe that Sha Sanlang had mentioned.

Next, on average every ten miles, Liu Sheng and others would pass by a native tribe.

Sometimes native tribes will appear on the other side of the river.

The closest distance between them is five miles, and the farthest distance is more than ten miles.And they all have dozens of houses and hundreds of people.

The river has many small bends but no big bends, and the overall flow direction is a bit to the southwest.

After passing another native tribe, Mao Chengguo couldn't help but ask: "Chief, don't we go explore the situation on the shore?"

Liu Sheng said: "All rivers will eventually flow into the sea or lake, so our main task this time is to understand where this river leads.

Of course, since we only brought dry food for three days, if we haven’t arrived at the lake or sea by tomorrow, we will return. "

Mao Chengguo nodded thoughtfully, and then couldn't help but ask: "Why do we need to explore where this river goes?"

Seeing that other people on the boat were looking over curiously, Liu Sheng smiled and said: "First of all, by passing the end of the river, we can determine the location of our Hua Department.

Secondly, if this river eventually flows into the sea, then we can make salt on the seaside and develop the salt industry.

Not only do we need salt, but the natives also need it. If we can make salt at the seaside, we will have an additional hard currency to trade with the natives.Even if the river eventually flows into a lake, if it is a saltwater lake, we can still make salt by the lake. "

After hearing Liu Sheng's words, everyone on the boat's eyes lit up.

Salt!

That's a good thing!
Huabu's boat had no sails, but it paddled downstream. Although the water flow was relatively gentle, the boat sailed at a slow speed. Liu Sheng measured it with his mobile phone and found that it could travel more than twenty miles an hour on average.

Liu Sheng also brought a laser rangefinder to measure the width of the river from time to time, draw river channel graphics, and record relevant data.

In this way, the expedition fleet sailed downstream for three hours, which is more than sixty miles, passing five native villages on the west bank and four native villages on the east bank, and finally arrived at a river intersection.

There are three rivers converging here, and the Xinluo River is the easternmost one.

The two rivers in the west are both narrower than the Luo River, but the middle river forks again a mile upstream and divides into two rivers.

Therefore, to be precise, this should be regarded as the place where four rivers meet.

The sixty-mile river channel (Xinluo River) that the previous expedition passed through was only more than 100 meters at its narrowest point.

But after approaching the intersection, the river quickly widened, and the place where it merged into the downstream river was already more than 500 meters wide.

Moreover, there is a large swamp on the east bank of the river. If it is a flood period, there must be a vast expanse of water on the east side, which is estimated to be at least three or four miles wide!

There are also swamps in the west, but because the terrain is slightly higher, the swamps are relatively narrow, less than a hundred meters wide.

This kind of place is obviously not suitable for native fishing and hunting, so no tribes occupy it.

Liu Sheng asked all the ships to anchor and stop. He stood on the deck and looked around carefully with a telescope. Then he smiled and shouted to the people around him: "The swamps here can easily be transformed into paddy fields. If tens of thousands of people come over, they will be transformed into paddy fields." Hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farmland can be cultivated every year!”

Mao Chengguo and others were farmers in Henan and did not know about the transformation of swamps into paddy fields. After listening to Liu Sheng's words, they suddenly realized that they were in front of a good place, and their eyes lit up.

You know, the price of paddy fields in Daming is much higher than that of dry land.

Because rice can be grown in paddy fields, the yield per mu is at least half a stone higher than that on dry land.

If they could really occupy this place and transform hundreds of thousands of acres of paddy fields, then their Huabu department might not be able to harvest hundreds of thousands of tons of rice a year!
Even millions of stones!
Qiu Ye, the deputy captain of the expedition team on the small river boat, heard this and said loudly: "Chief, since this is a good place, we will send people to occupy it later, right?"

Liu Sheng said: "Don't worry, the natives don't want it anyway, we can come and take it anytime."

However, we can give this place a name first, let’s call it Sihui, which means the intersection of four rivers. "

"Sihui?"

There is no shortage of people in the expedition team who are willing to flatter and flatter people, and someone immediately said: "Captain, you know the name of this place well, you will know where it is as soon as you hear it."

The others also praised him for his good name.

Liu Sheng smiled, ordered the anchor to be pulled out, and continued sailing downstream.

It was already high in the sky and it was noon, but everyone in the expedition team was very excited, so they did not dock to rest. They just ate some dry food on the boat and caught a cold.

After only sailing fifteen or sixteen miles, we arrived at a place where rivers converged, but this time it was three rivers.

The Luo River has become the westernmost one, but it is still the widest.

One of the expedition team members muttered: "What should we name this place? Sanhui?"

Liu Sheng said: "Call it 'Sanhe'."

No one competed with Liu Sheng for the naming rights of the place, so another new place name was born.

The expedition team continued sailing, and after more than ten miles, they saw a small river flowing into it.At this time, the main river channel was already two miles wide!

After that, the expedition passed a sandbar where the river was impacting, and the river became wider and wider.

Arriving 35 miles away from Sanhe, a sandbar island appeared in front of us.After passing this island, Liu Sheng estimated that it was at least ten square kilometers, and there were two smaller sand islands to the east.

As for the river surface, two or three miles is considered a narrow place. Between the big sandbar island and the next sandbar island, there is a southeasterly waterway. The south bank cannot be seen from the north. It is estimated to be at least ten miles long.

Mao Chengguo and other expedition members had never seen such a wide river surface and were stunned for a moment.

Liu Sheng was faintly excited because he had a premonition that they were about to reach the mouth of the river!
Therefore, he restrained the idea of ​​exploring this inlet and led the fleet to continue exploring downstream.

After sailing another seventeen or eight miles, the water in front suddenly became extremely wide!
The color of the water in the distance turned into a deep blue!
　sacramento river

　　
　
(End of this chapter)