Li Jing waited for Qin Liangyu for the past two days, and at the same time inspected the hydrological situation of the Hunhe River on the light curtain, there is no trivial matter on the battlefield, no matter how good the plan is, you must pay attention to the details, if you are negligent, it is likely to be a failure because of a small matter.

The Hunhe River is a very concentrated river, especially the upper reaches, which passes through Fushun and also passes through the two cities of Hetuara and Foala, the old nests of Jiannu. The reason is simple: human cities and settlements are generally close to water sources. It would be great if the second uncle could retreat normally, but they should also consider leaving another way for the second uncle to retreat. Li Jing always has a second plan for doing things.

Li Jing wanted to leave a way for his second uncle to retreat from the Hunhe River to Yingkou in an emergency. However, the upper reaches of the Hunhe River are shallow and difficult to boat, so the best choice is the rubber boat used for rafting in later generations, where the water is deep, you can raft, you can also paddle against the current, and the shallow water can go down to push the boat. Whether there are rubber boats in this era is a problem.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he remembered that when he went to Lanzhou on a business trip, a local friend took him on a trip and saw two Yellow River artifacts. One is the Lanzhou big waterwheel, which is mainly used for irrigation. The other is the sheepskin raft, which is a sharp weapon for crossing the river.

Sheepskin raft, called "leather boat" in ancient times, the folk song sings: "Nine songs of the Yellow River eighteen bends, the raft gets up and breaks through the river pass," Lanzhou sheepskin raft historical records have risen from the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, has a history of more than 300 years, and then this ancient handicraft has been inherited.

However, rafts as a tool for crossing rivers first appeared in the Western Han Dynasty, and large-scale use was in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty has repeatedly recorded the historical facts of using rafts to cross rivers and fight. In ancient times, sheepskin rafts were mainly used for long-distance water traffic between Qinghai, Lanzhou and Baotou. The raft is big and small, the largest sheepskin raft is made of more than 600 sheepskin bags, 22 meters long, 7 meters wide, 3 oars are placed in front of the back, each paddle is operated by 2 people, the load can reach 20-30 tons, Xiaoxing sleeps at night, travels more than 200 kilometers down the river from Lanzhou in a day, and can reach Baotou in 11 or 2 days.

The small raft is made of more than a dozen sheepskin bags, which is convenient for short transportation. The raft is generally made of 90 cowhide bags and can carry 40,000 catties. Because the raft is as big as a giant boat, drifting on the surging Yellow River, the momentum is magnificent, and there is a local saying of "sheepskin raft race warship". Before the 50s, in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, where railways were not yet opened and road traffic was not convenient, rafts had always been an important means of transportation.

"Blowing the cowhide and crossing the Yellow River" is a very novel and exciting use of the Lanzhou cowhide raft. Put the river crosser into the cowhide bag, inflate the mouth, the captain climbs on the cowhide bag, grabs the bag with one hand, paddles with the other hand, and can send the ferry to the other side of the Yellow River in only ten minutes, this kind of ferry method may not be heard of by you. If the situation is urgent, it can also be used in this way, and the two of them retreat along the Hunhe River with a cowhide bag. One person must not be able to do it, it must be in a group of two, one inside and one outside, otherwise the people inside will not know where they have gone, and it will be tragic if they drift to the sea.

Li Jing is not short of manpower now, this time grandpa brought a large number of manpower, many of them are old shopkeepers and stewards, and there are many young and middle-aged people. Li Jing arranged for some people in Nanjing to purchase cowhides and sheepskins. At the same time, the personnel of the original base of the Li family along the Yangtze River and the personnel of the newly established base of Li Jing were notified to go to the slaughterhouse to discuss the purchase of sheepskins, and this business could be done all year round. In the future, inland waterway shipping can use a large number of portable river crossing tools that can be disassembled and assembled at will.

The traditional method of making sheepskin rafts is to open from the neck of the sheep at the time of slaughtering, and slowly remove the entire skin from the neck, which can not be broken at all. Or simply padded to make a padded garment.

Normally, this work can't be done in the summer, because it has to be dried, and it has to be put up to "cover" for a while, and the weather is hot in summer, and it will be "covered" if you are not careful. Fortunately, it is the coldest time, but the problem of embalming can be solved by chemicals, and Li Jing has a way to embalm in summer.

This should be negotiated with the slaughterhouses in the cities along the Yangtze River, so that the sheepskin will definitely be more troublesome than normal, and the purchase price can be increased by 10%. However, practice makes perfect, and there is no trouble in mastering it, and in a super metropolis with a population of more than 5 million people like Jinling, there are five or six thousand sheep to be killed in a day, and a large number of sheep must be killed in the slaughterhouses of major ports along the Yangtze River. In this era, pork is cheap meat, and people with better lives still eat mutton. Sourcing sheepskins is not a big deal. Forty or fifty thousand sheep were killed along the Yangtze River in one day.

Li Jingxin has set up a workshop to make leather rafts, and at the same time, he can also handle leather part-time, and has the ability to handle leather. In the future, it is also a good business to sell leather clothes in Daming. In terms of processing, Li Jing standardized the production process. Peel off the fur of a large sheep or a whole cowhide, dehaired with salt water, apply vegetable oil to the limbs and neck to make it soft, and then tie it into a bag with a thin rope, leave a small hole and seal the hole after blowing enough air, these processes are completed, it is necessary to blow enough air into it, it will bulge, and finally tie the head, tail and limbs of the leather fetus tightly.

With the leather bag, the next step is to tie the raft, use hemp rope to make the hard ash wood strips into a detachable mortise and tenon structure, a square wooden frame, and then install several wooden strips horizontally with the mortise and tenon structure, and tie the leather tires under the wooden strips in turn, and the raft is made. The sheepskin raft is small, lightweight, and has a shallow draft, making it ideal for navigating shallow rivers, and all parts can be taken apart and carried. It is easy to make and inexpensive

The method of making a standard size sheepskin raft is to tie 21-23 round willow sticks with a thickness of 2-4 cm with ropes, or make a mortise and tenon structure that can be disassembled, make a rectangular frame about two meters wide and three meters long, divided into many small grids, and then arrange fourteen inflatable sheepskin rafts neatly, tie them to the frame together, and put one side of the sheepskin in the water when crossing the river, and the raft will flow down the river when ferrying.

This time, if there are any large items in the cities of Hetuara and Foala, it will be difficult to transport them, after all, this time the pirates are very fast, and they can only take away gold, silver, soft and cloth, etc., and if they are large and heavy goods such as grain, they will definitely be abandoned or burned. This time, I brought enough sheepskin rafts to raft large and low-value supplies along the Hunhe River and went directly to Yingkou. When you arrive at Yingkou, you can load it by sea and transport it away.

Li Jing made up his mind that every time Jiannu invaded, he robbed Daming cleanly everywhere he went, and this time he also wanted them to see, pick up the robbery, who is the most professional, and this time Mao will not give them a single left. If you don't turn Liaodong into a white land, you will write the Li character upside down.

If you have time and there are forests all over the place, it's a good idea to set a fire on the spot and drive away the wildlife. When this winter came, Jiannu still wanted to spend the winter and live a fart, so that the wild boar skin father and son could only hug and cry together this winter.