With the sea breeze blowing and the sun shining warmly, the Blackwater region in early July is the most pleasant season of the year.

The Dutch had been gone for three full days, and they had spent days carrying 5,000 tons of rice ashore by barge in small boats outside the modest wharf of the port of Daber. The port had never stored so much food at once, so Wei Boqiu, the new deputy commander of the gendarmerie and former head of the Mei Agency, who was in charge of the economy of the entire Heishui region, immediately ordered an urgent expansion of some of the wooden barns to store these precious grains.

At the same time, taking advantage of the fact that the most important fishing season of the year had not yet begun, Wei Boqiu ordered the four medium-sized fishing boats that had just been produced by the Heishui Shipyard to be moored in Da Bo Port immediately loaded with grain and transferred to Heishui Port for a batch of transfer. The warehouses there are large in volume, all of them are stone warehouses, and the moisture-proof measures are also very good, so they can store a lot of grain. These boats can take advantage of the northward current when they go and the north wind when they return, and although the degree is a little slower, it is not a problem to carry one or two thousand tons of grain back and forth three times before the fishing flood arrives at the end of the month.

For the people of the east coast of the Blackwater region today, it is not wrong to elevate the meaning of food. You must know that the total population of the various strongholds under the jurisdiction of the Heishui area has exceeded 70,000 (excluding the number of troops and Koreans on Jeju Island), of which: there are 25,000 Ming people on Jeju Island, which is the largest number; there are 20,000 people in Dabo Port, all of whom are displaced people who are ready to be transported to Australia at the end of January; and the rest of the Heishui Port, Rishiri Island, Kongtong Island, Yantai Port, and Busan all have a population ranging from 2,000 to 5,000; In addition to the above, there are still three villages in the Amur River area under the jurisdiction of the Heishui Pioneer Team, namely Temple Street, Henggon and Jiangdong Sanzhai. The population of these three villages has been vigorously collected and immigrated in the past few years. It has now reached 75oo people.

Mo Dashuai in the Heishui area attaches great importance to this place. He has always insisted on using the already not very abundant grain to transfuse blood here, so as to support the pioneer residents here to reclaim the fertile black soil by the river to grow oats, rye and other hardy grains. Although a group of immigrants (Ming and Koreans) who cannot adapt to the climate here die every winter, the Blackwater Pioneer Team is now short of everything, and there will be more immigrants moving along the Amur River after the next spring.

At present, the earliest temple street in the three confinement areas has almost achieved food self-sufficiency. The area's 3,000 inhabitants (about one-third of whom were Ming) cultivated 30,000 or 40,000 acres of farmland in the fertile river valleys to the left, and extensively planted oat seeds that had been passed down from Russia decades earlier.

Although the yield of oats is low, the nutritional value is extremely high, coupled with the geographical environment and climate near Temple Street. There are only two crops that can be grown: oats and rye. Wheat may be able to be planted as well, but the yield is dubious, so it is better to grow potatoes. Moreover, oats like coolness and avoid high temperatures (the temperature can sprout at 1-2 degrees, and the yield will drop significantly above 25 degrees), which is absolutely consistent with Temple Street; In addition, it likes a humid environment and avoids drought, which is also completely consistent with the two banks of the Heilongjiang River, which is rich in precipitation. So in these respects, oats are definitely the grain of choice in the Blackwater region - after all, you can't just eat potatoes to survive.

But when it comes to potatoes, the colder Blackwater region is also an ideal place to grow potatoes. The temperature here is low, and the potatoes are less prone to disease and the seeds are less susceptible to degradation, because even the potato seeds brought from the East Coast have been planted here for several years. However, the overall output can still be maintained at a high position.

Last year (1646), under the supervision of efficient and stern East Coast officers. After months of hard work, the 3,000 acres of oats planted by the 3,000 residents of Temple Street have had a "bumper harvest" -- an average yield of 4o catties per mu -- well, it's not a good harvest, but who made it the first year of planting. The harvest of 45,000 acres of oats that have been planted this year should be past the next year, after all, the black soil here is unusually fertile, and the local residents still have a large number of livestock (plundered from the Ming Dynasty) that the Blackwater Pioneer Team has fostered in their homes, and they also have many of their own livestock - including more than 5,000 wild sheep and hundreds of reindeer, which provide a large amount of farm fertilizer; In addition, the agricultural technicians sent from the east coast also asked everyone to use grass ash fertilizer fields (to reduce oat lodging), so the yield will not be bad, maybe the average yield per mu at the beginning of September this year is 45 catties, there is no pressure at all.

With such a large area of agricultural cultivation near Temple Street, and the construction of the walled city into a beautiful mixed civil and engineering fortress, the demonstration effect is huge, and the attraction to the nearby Shandan people is also huge. These people suffered from the tyranny of the Manchus and Russia (paying taxes to Russia and the Qing court at the same time), and they could not live happily for a long time. Nowadays, the rich and powerful reputation of Temple Street continues to grow on both sides of the Amur River, so more and more Shandan people come to join the city with their families. More than half of those who came to defect were resettled on Sakhalin Island, and the remaining half were assigned to Miaojie, Henggon, and Jiangdong Sanzhai to enrich the local population.

Temple Street harvested 72o tons of oats last year, and after removing the local residents' own consumption, there are almost more than 100 tons of surplus grain. According to the rules set by the Heishui Pioneer Team, these surplus grains were to be requisitioned and used for blood transfusions to Henggon Village and Jiangdong Village to maintain the survival of these two settlements. Of course, the people of the East Coast did not forcibly take away their food without giving anything, they would take out some of the fish and shrimp that were kept in the underground ice cellars of Zài, which were not rare goods in Sakhalin at all, as well as some daily necessities in exchange.

This exchange was of course unequal in the economic sense, and amounted to a disguised economic colony of the East Coasters, but the local Shandan people had no problem - in fact they were happy to have someone to trade with them, so they strictly pursued it. Nowadays, Henggon Village, a place that was established at about the same time as Temple Street, is also close to self-sufficiency, while Jiangdong Village still needs to pay a considerable part of the grain from other places - almost 4oo tons, and the pressure is not great. Moreover, after the Dutch brought in 5,000 tons of rice (the cost of the technology patent), Wei Boqiu even ambitiously prepared to further advance in the Amur River basin: he sent an expedition to investigate the area around Komsomolsk-on-Amur to see if it was possible to set up a walled city there to extend the tentacles of the people on the east bank further upstream.

The easterners penetrated so deeply into the Amur that the chances of colliding with the nearby Manchu (Ningguta Zhangjing region) and the Russians (mainly the roving Cossack grain convoys) increased indefinitely. But the people on the east coast didn't care, Mo Dashuai was very supportive of Wei Boqiu's idea, he thought that once the people on the east coast established a complete and strong city in the local area, and then deployed a few cannons, trained a group of archers and musketeers, and the city was generally set up on the riverside, supported by naval gunboats on the east bank that patrolled the river regularly, and the general forces really couldn't break it.

The Russians are few people, and it is difficult to capture the walled city on the east bank, which is also defended by muskets and artillery. The Manchu Qing Dynasty was due to the painful transportation conditions in Heilongjiang and other places, and the sparse population and scarce resources on both sides of the Heilongjiang River could not support a large-scale army for a long time. You don't see that in the 5o years of the 16th century, the Qing court fought two major wars with Russia, and the first time was only 2,000 people (2,000 Eight Banner soldiers were severely damaged by the 17o Cossack grain conscription team led by Khabarov, and returned with a heavy defeat, two cannons captured, and six or seven hundred dead and wounded); The second time he gathered 10,000 men to repel hundreds of Cossacks and recaptured Nebuchu, but soon retreated due to the lack of food, and the recaptured land was occupied by the Russians.

Therefore, in such a situation, the people on the east bank are backed by the big river, the transportation and deployment of materials are convenient and fast, and they also have many veterans who have fought for many years to command and defend the city, and no number of Qing soldiers or Cossacks can please them. As long as they give the East Coasters a few years of respite and put down roots in the local area, then their chances will become smaller and smaller, and they may face the dilemma of being pushed back by the East Coasters in the future.

The Heilongjiang River basin is fertile and abundant, and the only thing lacking is population. Because of the harsh climate and backward agricultural production technology, the local Shandan indigenous people have never been able to raise the population. After the East Coast people came here, in addition to the improvement of agricultural technology, it was actually more of an improvement in organizational strength. The people of the eastern coast established a relatively rudimentary micro-industrial society in south-central Sakhalin and maximized administrative efficiency through the militarized administration of Guò (the area under the jurisdiction of the Blackwater Pioneer Corps is still a military district to this day). As a result, the local Qiē exhibitions are on the fast track, at least much faster than their neighbors – Japan, Korea, the Manchus, and Russia – and the government is far more grippy than these individuals, so that people on the East Coast are often able to fully mobilize and deploy the limited resources at hand to get the most out of their exhibitions.

It is believed that with the in-depth implementation of the strategy of persistent large-scale migration to the Heilongjiang Valley, Sakhalin Island, Jeju Island, Pusan, and other places formulated by Mo Dashuai, the strength of the people on the East Coast in the Far East will become stronger and stronger. Especially in the Heilongjiang River Valley, the people on the east coast, who have geographical advantages and logistical supply advantages, actually have a certain strategic initiative over the Manchu Dynasty, and perhaps one day when Mo Dashuai raises heavy troops and enters the jurisdiction of the Qing court in Ningguta, it will be able to greatly shock the Manchu court in Beijing.

Although today's Northern Manchu is a deserted frontier for the Manchus, this is their land of Longxing after all, and it is also the most important source of troops for the Eight Banners, otherwise the Manchus would not have sent troops to fight the Russians who invaded here several times in the next ten years, and they actually still value this place. However, with the strong entry of the people on the east bank into the Heilongjiang Valley, it is believed that the tranquility here will be broken several years in advance, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty will have hostile forces such as Nanming, Daxi, Dashun, and Zhengjia in the south, and Russia and the east coast in the north. (To be continued......)

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