Before the cold winter of slaughter, Liang Xiangjian arrived at the dock of Heishui Port on the "Sakhalin Eagle". He was accompanied by hundreds of Qing soldiers captured from the Yangtze River, dozens of whom were so-called "real Manchurian officers and soldiers" - these people would end up in Heishui Prison for the next period of time, and their status was also hard labor, according to Wei Boqiu's words, "to build Heishui County with their own hands to atone for their sins".

Although Liang Xiangjian is very uninterested in Wei Boqiu, his attitude towards the prisoners of the Qing army is highly consistent, and this dooms these people to a tragic fate. As the newly appointed head of Heishui County and a permanent member of the Heishui District Committee of the Executive Committee, Liang Xiangjian went straight to the construction site outside the city to inspect the construction work in the county seat as soon as he arrived at his post today.

Outside the city, not far from the city walls, is the quietly flowing Blackwater River (Aleksandrovka), which is already wide downstream, ranging from a dozen to a few tens of meters. The banks of the river are full of swampy wetlands, damp, cold, muddy and difficult to walk, and because the swamps provide abundant nutrients, the banks of the river are full of fir, coniferous forests, larch, alder, birch, and willow trees, which grow very well - these woods also serve to weaken the wind in a place where the wind blows in winter and spring.

Many of the trees lay down in the marshes - some from natural decay, some by the wind - the fallen trees were covered with moss and fungus, the roots were full of grass mounds, and occasionally moose, reindeer and other animals came to eat moss and lichens, but they were very vigilant. Once a human is seen approaching. will immediately scatter his legs and run away.

The weather was nice today. Under the warm sunlight, the mist that originally shrouded the Heishui River Valley quietly dispersed, making the whole picture of this vast valley, which is called "hazy and secluded", completely displayed in front of Liang Xiangjian.

What a -- well, strange -- valley it was, squeezed by the mountains on either side and forming a pitiful narrow depression on the banks of the Blackwater River. More than half of the depression is muddy swamps, and except in the winter when it freezes, it is impossible for vehicles to pass at all, and even pedestrians and livestock have to work hard to walk - no joke. So far, 12 people in Heishui County have accidentally drowned in the swamps in this valley, and no one wants to take this passage in summer and autumn.

In the swamp outside Heishui County, there were many hard labor prisoners busy at this time. They walked through the mud with iron tools, and worked hard to drain the water from the swamp - as the population of Heishui County grew, it was time to ask for land further afield, the west of the county was the seashore, the soil texture was not suitable for cultivation, and the sides were flanked by rolling mountains, so if you wanted more suitable land for cultivation, you had to find a way to go further upstream to the Heishui River.

But according to the primitive and wild natural environment here. If we don't clear the forest and drain the swamps, we won't be able to use this land that has been dormant for thousands of years. These lands are undoubtedly fertile. But first you need to build a lot of infrastructure, such as reservoirs, ditches, etc., otherwise you will just stare dryly. Obviously, this kind of development is an extremely onerous task, and the mobilization of the local population is one thing, but more often it is probably done by hard laborers.

The hard labor prisoners Liang Xiangjian saw at this moment were such a group of poor people who were tortured to death by fatigue, mud, autumn rain, illness and the overseer's whip. More than half of them were captured by the Qing army, and the rest were natives from hostile Shandan tribes, Korean captives, criminals, and many landlords and gentry from the Ming Kingdom.

Anger, grievance, fear, helplessness, homesickness and other feelings rolled in the heart, the whip marks on the back were hot and painful under the cold water soaking, and the shackles on the hands and feet weighed more than a thousand pounds, such a situation, even the Eight Banners soldiers known as wild boar skin nicknames could not stand it, not to mention the thin bodies of the rebel landlords and gentry from the south of the Yangtze River - many people died on this, and some people were humiliated and hanged themselves, but more people chose to survive, after all, it is better to die than to live.

I remember that the famous Virgin Menghu on the east coast once wrote an article describing the Black Water Forced Labor Camp - "Dark Camp" - based on what she had heard, and described in depth the tragic experience of the prisoners in the Black Water Forced Labor Camp, and he also highlighted the tragic situation of the deprivation of human rights of those "political prisoners" (i.e., the puppet Qing generals and the gentry of the Litong Tartars), hoping to arouse people's sympathy and improve their treatment. The article, which was published in a number of local magazines and publications, was said to have had a great impact, but it did not seem to be of much use, and the camp still exists today, and the prisoners in it are still doing mechanical labor day after day until they are released from prison.

Liang Xiangjian naturally had no sympathy for these people, he only knew that a large number of people who had been rescued from the Tartars were about to come to Heishui County, and the existing development process in the county was already quite insufficient, so it was urgent to expand the territory outward. The first task was to clear the woods and bushes, drain the swamps, and build a small water conservancy – if there was time to spare, it would be better to dredge the upper channel of the Blackwater River to ensure that boats could go up the river.

He came to the Heishui region this time to take office, and even concurrently served as a member of the regional standing committee (the executive committee reformed the organizational structure of the Heishui region and implemented democratic centralism, and Liang Xiangjian entered the standing committee as the head of the county in Heishui area; from now on, the general affairs and military operations in the Heishui area will still be decided by Shao Shude, and the important affairs will be discussed by the Standing Committee, of course, Shao Shude still has the right of veto on these matters), so naturally he cannot come empty-handed. No, he not only brought four 72-ton small inland steamboats (transported on large ships), which are very common in the mainland, but also brought 8 sets of steam propulsion systems used in this kind of ship, which can be assembled on the spot after the hulls are built at the Heishui Shipyard in the future, which makes 8 more small inland steamboats.

This adds up to a total of 12 72-ton inland steamboats, which are undoubtedly extremely crucial for Sakhalin Island, which is crisscrossed by the river. Especially in the Heishui River Basin, which can be called the industrial center, this kind of inland river boat with a shallow draft can go up the river and transport a large number of people and materials to wherever people on the east coast want to go, which is of great significance for the inland hinterland of Heishui County.

Passing through the construction site where these poor men were fighting, Liang Xiangjian, accompanied by Johnson Sen, the former deputy county magistrate who was actually in charge of the work (Johnson himself will be transferred to the acting county magistrate of Fushan County, Dengzhou, which is also a county directly under the jurisdiction of the East Coast, not under the jurisdiction of the servant army), visited the brick kiln factory, lime factory and cement factory outside the city. These factories are small in size and employ fewer workers, but they are still one of the few industrial facilities in the Blackwater region, and they also provide a large amount of cheap materials for the construction of the area.

In addition to these building materials companies, other factory facilities are even worse. The lumberyard, which used to be close to the city walls, now extends 10 kilometers out of the city - because the taiga of Sakhalin is not very dense, the trees are slightly sparse compared to the forests in the warmer areas, and in recent years, all kinds of construction, wars and even furniture have been used by the woods exported from Blackwater County, so the county's forest line has retreated far from the outskirts of the city.

It is quite difficult to haul the trees out of the old forests deep in the mountains and transport them to the riverside, and then float them down the river to the timber processing factory located on the riverside. Especially in the section from the logging camp to the riverside, many hard labor prisoners froze to death in the middle of the winter when the climate was cold. This is obviously unacceptable to the county officials, because even in their eyes the prisoners are consumables, but in Heishui County, which is not rich in human resources, the price is too high.

After the timber is transported downstream to the wood processing plant downstream (in winter through the heavy sled), the wood drying kiln of the plant is hot dried, and then processed by hydraulic sawing machines, planers, etc., and the processed timber is transported to the port for storage by guò small boats. The scraps (mainly sawdust, scraps, etc.) were transported to a nearby mill, which was newly established in the second half of last year (1652), a steam-powered mill (rye, oats, barley) - two steam engines drove four mills, fueled by sawdust (which meant low costs), and produced 25 tons of flour per day, enough to feed tens of thousands of people, and the profit was quite good.

There was also an iron-making workshop in the city, with 105 regular workers and a number of apprentices, six wrought iron furnaces, and four low-horsepower steam engine-driven hammers of various models, which were used as raw materials for processing steel, iron and other metals brought from the country. At present, it can produce some simple metal farm tools and hardware tools, and can also carry out simple repairs to some clumsy machine parts, and can also forge part of the structure on the plate armor. Johnson introduced to the expressionless Liang Xiangjian, Heishui County's family background is still relatively thin, but in this way, it is already the area with the highest industrialization process in the control area on the east coast of the Far East, which also shows the difficulty of the industrialization process.

"The family background is indeed a little thin." Hearing this, Liang Xiangjian couldn't help but sigh, but then he realized that this was inappropriate, so he comforted Johnson and some other attachés instead: "But let's take it step by step, Heishui County has only been developing for a few years?" It is good to have this now, which shows that your work is fruitful, and the next step is to build on this foundation and create greater well-being for the people. (To be continued......)