Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1104 Library page ([-])

"As for the trial voyage of the Indian Ocean route, since it is the resolution of the Executive Committee, I have no opinion." On September 1656, 9, in an office of the Heishui County Government, Chang Kaisheng received Captain Ji Wen and his party. After receiving their report and reviewing some documents, he said so.

Anyway, this route is also a trial operation. In the first few years, only two or three ships will go around, and only one round trip can be made a year. The transportation capacity is extremely limited, and it will not pose substantial pressure on the Blackwater pioneering team, so he agreed. very easily.

After dismissing Captain Ji Wen and others, Chang Kaisheng decided to take a good look at the countryside on the outskirts of Heishui Town to see how this core city in the Heishui area (the capital of Sakhalin Island and the outer Northeast) was like, especially The local agricultural production situation, after all, is the foundation of the foundation.

"Agriculture is the foundation of all activities, and we must not be sloppy." Just as Chang Kaisheng started his trip to the Heishui countryside, Liang Xiangjian, who is in charge of all towns in Sakhalin Island, also settled in several newly opened villages in the south of the island. At this point, he started his agricultural inspection, and what he saw and heard there obviously left a bad impression on him, so that he was almost in a state of rage at this time: "But you have been cultivating here for two years, but you are still Does this look look good? Barkin, Commander Chang promoted you from a white man to the head of the township because of his praise. Let's see what achievements you have made under your rule now?"

Barkin was originally an early native chieftain near Temple Street who defected to the east bank. He has always been more submissive, so he was promoted by Chang Kaisheng to be the head of the township, and then transferred to Picheng Port (Poronesk) to take charge of the reclamation affairs. Give him a chance, let him have a step up.But now it seems that he is a local chieftain with limited ability after all. He failed to seize this rare opportunity and messed up the matter, so that Liang Xiangjian, who is now the de facto "commissioner" of Sakhalin Island, has a bad impression of him. .

The cause of the incident was that Liang Xiangjian wanted to come to Picheng and other places to inspect the progress of the reclamation work, so Balkin held a so-called "Agricultural Achievement Exhibition" to show Liang Xiangjian and his party that Picheng Port has been developed for more than two years. Such as: potatoes the size of a human head, radishes and watermelons weighing eight kilograms, etc. In addition, they also boasted to the inspectors that the harvest ratio of locally grown grain seeds reached more than [-], which surprised Liang Xiangjian and others.

It’s just that a scam is a scam after all. When Liang Xiangjian insisted on going to the countryside to check every acre and asked the local farmers carefully, the trick of Balkin and others to buy food and melons from other places and pretend to be local production to deceive their superiors was finally exposed. , so Liang Xiangjian angrily reprimanded them.

"Last year, a frost damaged most of the local crops. Why didn't you report it? Do you really think we are deaf and blind? We even learned how to deceive our superiors. Barkin, you are 'talented'!" Liang Xiangjian was angry. He said, "Someone told me just now that you embezzled the development expenses issued by your superiors to overcome the food shortage, and you simply ate the grain seeds and cattle sent by Qingquan Botanical Garden. Nima, you are so fucking talented! "

Thanks to the honesty of the local farmers, Liang Xiangjian and others were able to interrogate a lot of information in the past two years.For example, in October last year, an unexpected frost hit the Picheng Harbor area, so that most of the public or private vegetable gardens suffered heavy losses, and the oats, barley, and rye in the fields were naturally inevitable. Bad luck.When such a serious natural disaster happened, the local officials did not immediately report it and organize disaster relief to reduce the losses, but chose to conceal it immediately. The officials were scholars from the Ming Dynasty. After all, there was a serious shortage of cadres in the Heishui area. These scholars were still literate and flattering. Therefore, Deputy Commander Wei Boqiu suggested giving them a chance to use them to see the effect, but now it seems very bad.

In fact, not only these scholars are unqualified, even some wounded and retired soldiers are also unqualified. There is no need to worry too much about their loyalty, but the low professional quality is also obvious to all.Liang Xiangjian just asked a wounded and retired German mercenary, "What is the cause of the autumn cold" and "What should be paid attention to in normal times", but the person didn't know what to ask, and finally said "I don't know, I think this may be arranged by the benevolent God," Lei turned over the crowd.

The poor performance of the colonizing officials made Liang Xiangjian and others realize that without the professional cadres trained by the East Bank itself, it is impossible to manage the place efficiently by relying solely on scholars or officials under the old system.Although the Anti-Qing Military and Political University in Yantai sent a few cadres here, firstly, the number was too small, and secondly, they themselves did not have professional agricultural literacy, and they were not very good at agricultural production. , just randomly collected some information about the village managers and pieced it together - this happened not only in Picheng Port, but also in other places. Currently Liang Xiangjian is focusing on rectifying this unhealthy trend.

Even if there are occasional local-trained agricultural students who live in the Sakhalin Island area, due to various reasons—such as lack of experience—they will mostly just recite some theories and write articles that only focus on form in the early stage, and even The materials used in the article were collected for them by lower-level officials.Senior officials—such as Liang Xiangjian, member of the Liang Da Standing Committee—if they want to know the real situation of agricultural production, it seems that they can only obtain accurate first-hand information from the people who cultivated and sowed the seeds, which is really too bad.

"Also, the area of ​​land that is easy to reclaim here is not enough, why didn't you report it as soon as possible?" Speaking of this, Liang Xiangjian was angry again. The person in charge of investigating the local agricultural conditions was a student of Wei Boqiu's Heishui Transportation College. He is now Seriously suspecting that these two people lacked a sense of responsibility, they used the funds for the investigation to spend a lot of money. When they were working, they just asked some nearby Ainu people and decided to set up the new settlement here-of course, this is because of Liang. People's prejudices, in fact, these two disciples of Wei Boqiu are quite discerning. The Picheng Port area is indeed a settlement with relatively good agricultural and animal husbandry conditions in the Terpeniya Bay area. They are not the ones who messed up all this. , but the local officials. To be precise, it was Barkin and other herdsmen officials with strong roots and the Ming Dynasty scholars who served as the staff group. It was a series of strange actions of these people that made the [-] local residents alive. miserable.

Of course, the so-called agricultural and animal husbandry conditions in Picheng Port are relatively good, and they are definitely not comparable to those in Dabo or even Heishui Port.Because it is quite humid and the forest is very dense, only the area along the river can be reclaimed and planted crops - the land here is covered by dense broad-leaved forests, such as elm, hawthorn, birch, etc. The soil is deep and fertile, which is rare but much of what remains is tundra, swamps (which are especially plentiful), fire-burned barren hills, and lowlands covered in coniferous forests and badly leaky soils.

In fact, if you look a little farther away from the Boronai Valley, you will know that there are such bad lands everywhere, with hillsides and swamps interspersed in the middle, and the vegetation on them is sparse, almost no different from the polar regions.Especially in the area east of Picheng Harbor, there are large swamps and wetlands in the middle, making agricultural planting impossible.Unless you can mobilize more than 10 people, invest huge sums of money, and spend N years on environmental improvement (mainly draining swamp water), you can never imagine turning this so-called bad land into good land. It seems so difficult now.

After Liang Xiangjian vented his anger at Barkin and the others, seeing the trembling expressions of these people, he suddenly had no interest in talking nonsense with them, and he had already made up his mind to beat them to the end when he went back, and he should be punished They have to be sent to coal mines and quarries to be sent to reform through labor to see who dares to neglect their duties in the future.

However, Liang Xiangjian now understands that the Pichenggang area is not very suitable for agricultural planting. After asking local farmers, he learned that the frost damage in autumn here may be overcome, but the humidity is unbearable.Especially in summer and autumn, when the crops are in the stage of heading, flowering and grain filling, there is an incredible amount of precipitation here, so that the fields are full of grains that are not fully ripe and soaked in water, and all of them are crumpled. , an experienced farmer can tell at a glance that the portion is insufficient; and if the crop escapes this period (the rainy season is delayed), when it is fully ripe, the continuous rain causes almost all the grain to fall on the ground. , Bundles are rotten and moldy, and a year's harvest is in vain. How can this not make people discouraged?

"It seems that this place is really only suitable for the development of vegetables, fruits, animal husbandry, and fishing. Grain planting takes up manpower and does not produce much. The conditions are not even as good as those of Heishui Port in the middle of the island. At least there is no autumn cold and unseasonable weather. Looking through the agricultural data here, if they didn’t record indiscriminately, the seed-to-seed ratio of the grains here is even less than 1:4, and one mu of land can only harvest forty catties, which is really shabby. In the future, Let’s concentrate on doing something else here. As for the grains that the residents need in their daily lives, I think it’s better to import them from outside. Anyway, the fishery resources here are relatively rich, and the wild area is also very vast. It’s not difficult for the diligent residents to collect enough livestock. The hay for the winter, together with the export of special products in exchange for some grains, is enough to keep the local residents alive." Liang Xiangjian thought about it, and gradually came up with a plan.

As for why not simply withdraw the three new settlements, including Picheng Township, Wubai Township (Makarov City, named after [-] natives registered households), and Yushu Township (Smirnekh City) Well, this was the plan that Marshal Shao made at the beginning, and Lao Liang said that he could only admit it with his nose, and don't do what he thought.

(End of this chapter)