After staying in the Ishikari Plain for five days, the Gensu Sea expedition team left Hokkaido and headed north towards the Gensu Sea to find out what the vast area north of the sea was like, and where the ghost kingdom that had come from thousands of miles to pay tribute during the Sadakan period was. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The Ishikari Plain, an uncultivated wilderness bathed in the light of civilization, is full of ancient timber wolf forests, and under the baptism of autumn winds, the vast forests present a golden autumn scene. Wild grapes, nightshades, blueberries, sour berries and many other wild fruits are hung in bunches on the branches and vines of the trees, attracting people and animals who find them to pick and eat.

The roots of the trees are withered, the branches are rotten, and all kinds of edible fungi such as shiitake mushrooms grow proudly, and the personnel who are sent out to pick wild vegetables are picked one by one.

On the west bank of the Ishikari River, a square castle made of earth and logs was first taking shape, and the walls were so high that even moats were dug out, and the moats were filled with sharpened wooden stakes.

"Yuan Yuanjun, the city wall is high enough, right?"

"No, we have to go up another six feet. Is that team a pig? When will the city be built? Listen to me, the slowest team is only allowed to eat a small bowl of rice and pickles at noon, and don't think about meat and soup. ”

Yuan Zuo inspected the progress of city construction and logging and land reclamation every day, and scolded his subordinates for the slightest lack of work. In order to motivate these prisoners to work, they were divided into teams of 50 people according to the military establishment, and the worst of them every day could only eat four minutes full, and the best ones were naturally enough.

"It's really a sentence from above, and a broken leg from below." Seeing that Yuan Zuo was walking away, several teams were getting together and sighed.

"It's still too slow, the weather is getting colder and colder day by day, and if you can't build the city houses before winter, everyone will have a hard time this winter." Yuan Zuo, who came back from a tour of the construction site, said worriedly.

There were only about 3,000 prisoners and 300 sergeants drawn from the Eighth Army of the Liao Province to protect Hokkaido, and it was indeed a bit difficult to build a city before the winter with this manpower. What's more, Yuan Zuo's requirements are so high, the city wall must be built to a height of eighteen feet, and a nine-foot-deep moat must be dug.

The 300 non-commissioned officers supervised the work of the prisoners and guarded against attacks by the local Maoists, and basically did not participate in the construction. The 3,000 prisoners built the city wall with only 1,300 people, 1,000 felled wood, 500 built houses, and 200 people were responsible for hunting, picking wild vegetables and cooking rice, and other miscellaneous goods, so manpower was extremely scarce.

"After more than ten days of exploration, there are not many local Mao. According to the data provided by Hu Anjun and others, there are only a dozen Maoren villages in the Ishikari Plain and the surrounding mountains, with a population of more than 10,000, distributed in the mountains and wilderness within a radius of hundreds of miles. As the lieutenant of Ishikari Prefecture and in charge of the military, Bai Shuiheng suggested.

"No." Yuan Zuo shook his head and vetoed: "The three thousand people who were transported by His Highness to open up Hokkaido are all traitors and prisoners who were exiled by the imperial court, and they were transported here to accept the criminal law to atone for their crimes. There are still many people in it who are even Jiangyang thieves who kill people and overhaul goods, and they let the overseer's soldiers build the city, who will deter them? Not a single one, those fierce people in it seized the opportunity to rebel, and our career in developing Hokkaido is probably going to come to naught. ”

"The only way to do this is to build the city as soon as possible, and with the city to block the north wind, the house construction will almost be in the past."

The county Cheng was worried: "But our grain province is only expected to meet the needs of August, and whether it can survive next year's autumn harvest is a problem." Nokkaido's winters are too cold, and clothing may not be enough to protect you from the cold. It's not enough for everyone to just eat food, they also have to have meat and vegetables, and they need to send more people to hunt and gather in the wild to save food. ”

Whether the grain brought can last until next year's autumn harvest, Yuan Zuo, Bai Shuiheng and other county officials frowned deeply. It is better to count on Anton to send a supply fleet than to quickly cut down a large area of forest and open up vast arable land for next year's spring ploughing and waiting for the autumn harvest. Before leaving, the king made it clear that they would not send a fleet to bring in some immigrants and supplies until the autumn of the following year when they developed Hokkaido.

"Report to Yuan Envoy Jun and Bai County Lieutenant...... After a few days of observation, it was found that the Ishikari River was in the period of salmon migration, so we only needed to send people to trace the shallow area of the upper reaches of the river and set up nets to round up the fish, and we could get countless fresh fish in a short time. ”

Shuiyang rushed to report that he was born as a fisherman in Beisha City, and he had an unusual understanding of the habits of salmon and other migratory fish in the sea. Ben checked the riverside for several days to see if there would be a salmon migration in Ishikari Kawachi, Hokkaido, in the autumn. Unexpectedly, he hit the main force of salmon migration, and it is really difficult for ordinary people to find traces of salmon migration in the lower reaches of the Ishikari River, where the river is wide and deep.

"Salmon migration?" Yuan Zuo, who was born in Wu County, Jiangdong, heard about this for the first time, and he didn't know why.

Bai Shuiheng and other natives of Liaodong are overjoyed, and the migration of salmon means that the inexhaustible fish are beckoning to them.

Bai Shuiheng explained to Yuan Zuo the natural phenomenon of salmon migration, and the people living on the riverside in Liaodong celebrated the arrival of the fishing season during the migration of Yujun.

When Yuan Zuo heard this, he was immediately overjoyed, and clapped his hands and said: "Shuiyang, I will give you the right and responsibility, and immediately organize five hundred people to go north along the Ishikari River, and set up nets to round up and arrest people in shallow water." You can catch as much fish as you can, and dry and store what you can't eat. ”

"Whoa!" Shuiyang was overjoyed in his heart, and he didn't want to report a matter of fish that could be obtained.

After several days of investigation, Mizuyo and his people identified several shallow waters of the Ishikari River and tributaries where salmon migrated. Five hundred men were divided into several waves and rounded up in the shallows, holding the nets that had been made for several days.

Salmon are anxious to migrate to the upper reaches of the river, where they come from to spawn, and even if there are many difficulties and dangers ahead, they will dive headlong into it without looking back.

At this time, it is also in the period of concentrated migration of salmon stocks, and there are densely packed salmon in the shallows of the river, which are generally about seven catties, and people can catch one by throwing themselves into the water with their bare hands, and a net is often dozens or hundreds of them are pulled up to the shore. On the first day alone, Shuiyang and others caught more than 700 catties of salmon, and after having enough nets, they caught more fish, and they could catch more than 1,000 catties every day.

With the capture of a large number of salmon, the soldiers and civilians of Ishikari Prefecture won a rare good day, and each person was given half a fish every day.

The catch was so huge that Yuan Zuo and other county officials were overjoyed, and added 300 more people to fish, and all the fish that could not be eaten every day were made into dried fish for storage.

When the salmon fishing flood ended, Shuiyang and others caught tens of thousands of catties of salmon, most of which could not be eaten in time and made into dried fish.

Shuiyang was too late to catch more salmon.

However, salmon eggs are more precious than fish meat, each egg is about 7 mm in diameter, and the nutritional value is extremely high, 7 fish roe is equivalent to the size of an egg.

When Shuiyang informed Yuan Zuo of the news, Yuan Zuo was so happy that he couldn't support himself, not thinking that Hokkaido's salmon migration alone would bring two abundant food sources.

Then order Shuiyang to probe the spawning situation of the salmon school, and after the spawning is completed, immediately organize people to fish for fish roe.

Time passed quickly in the busyness of Yuan Zuo leading everyone to cut through obstacles, and the cold north wind quietly descended on the Ishikari Plain with snowflakes.

A month ago, the south bank of the Ishikari River was a vast jungle, but now there is a vacant land of more than 15,000 acres, and in the center of the clearing stands a square castle with an 18-foot-high wall, surrounded by moats. The wooden plaque on the castle tower is written with the three big characters of "Ishikari Prefecture" written vigorously.

The open space that the prisoners had cleared after a month was littered with thick logs, and from time to time people braved the heavy snow to go out of the city and carry dead branches that had gathered outside the city into the city.

Rows of cross-lined houses in the city are billowing with smoke, and the smell of food wafts from each hut.

It's not that these houses are too simple and have no aesthetic sense, they just dig pits in the ground, put wood on them and apply mud on them to make them similar to the crypts and huts where the people live, and there is really a scene of a prosperous small city in the Central Plains.