"We started from Yilan City, and after traveling about 2,500 miles along various rivers, we arrived at a small town at the foot of Xing'an Mountain. This is the territory of the Earl of Chita, the founder of Chita, which was given by the Emperor of the Han Dynasty. This count was the head of the Mongol Maomingan tribe, the son of Tushetu Khan, who later migrated eastward and once joined the Jurchens. ”

Li Xin sat on a sleigh with a pencil and wrote this text on parchment, and when he understood the vastness of Sipol, he decided to collect information here, and then submitted it to the emperor, who hoped that the emperor would understand the truth about this northern frontier, and hoped that the empire would incorporate this rich and vast land into the Han Dynasty.

The north wind is howling, the snowflakes are flying, the wind is blowing across his face like a knife, Li Xin is wearing deerskin gloves on his hands, but he still feels that his fingers are stiff.

Reaching out to wrap the mink around his face with only a pair of eyes exposed, Li Xin held the pencil and continued to write. He couldn't help but sigh, fortunately there was a pencil, otherwise he would not be able to write in this northern country, the ink had long been frozen into ice, and even the brush was as stiff as a stone. This pencil is very easy to use, you can use it at any time, you don't have to worry about the extreme cold, and it is really an irreplaceable writing thing in the northern country.

"The Son of Heaven of the Han Dynasty bestowed the title of three counts of Maoming Anbu and dozens of viscounts, barons, lords, etc. Some of them graze on the shores of Lake Hulun, some on the banks of the Erguna River, and some on the Shilka River. Count Chegen took his tribe to Chechen Province, Beihai Province and the area between the Great Khingan Mountains and the Hung Yen Mountains to go on a safari. ”

"They established a garrison on the banks of the Yinguoda River in the upper reaches of the Shilka River, and called this garrison Chita after the title of count given to Chegen by the Emperor of the Han Dynasty."

"The distance was much longer than I expected, and although it was along the river, the river was winding and our destination was in the east, but we often had to follow the river to the south or north, and sometimes even back to the west, so that our distance was constantly increasing. According to Sorey, we are only halfway to our destination, where the Shilka and Erguna rivers meet. ”

"Oh my God, it's crazy, there's nothing but snow, it's dense forests, towering trees, wide rivers, and now the rivers are all three or four feet of ice, and the land is full of legs of snow. If it's summer or autumn. Maybe we can go faster by boat, after all, it's downstream. ”

Li Xindu almost forgot how many days he had traveled in this ice and snow world, and only remembered that every day he saw ice and snow, almost the same scene. It has been a long time since we saw a village, especially after leaving Beihai Province, and the place we are traveling to now has not yet been incorporated into the territory of the empire, and is a hole between Beihai, Chechnya, Xing'an, and Heilongjiang provinces. It is now mainly inhabited by the Mongol Maomingan tribe and the Sauron and Daur tribes known as the Tunguska, as well as some Khalkha Mongols and Buryat Mongols. ”

"Occasionally, we could see some wooden fences along the river, some huts and tents, some tree houses. But it's mostly low. The lifestyles of these tribes are similar, they mainly live by herding, hunting and fishing, but they mainly herd reindeer and raise a small number of cattle and sheep. There will also be some pigs. However, most of their camps were set up in mossy areas, that is, on the northern slopes of those mountains, which were not very high. At the bottom of the mountain is a dense forest, but at the top of the mountain, there are no woods, but tundra, which is the favorite food of the deer here. ”

"The herders set up camp on the northern slopes, but they don't have to herd the reindeer much, the deer are free-range, and the deer come back to camp on their own. The camp by the river at the bottom of the mountain is the summer camp of these tribesmen, and in the summer, they will come to the camp in the forest by the river to hunt and fish. ”

"The people here seem to be poor, but they are self-sufficient, and their houses are mostly treehouses, straw huts, or leather tents, and there are no ornaments in the houses, they are all low and simple. But they hunted, fished, grazing, and were self-sufficient, and they seemed to be very happy. ”

"Due to the northward expansion of the empire, post roads have been built in Chechnya, Beihai, Hung Yen and other provinces, many trading stations have been established, and many merchants have begun to pour into this ancient and isolated place, and they have brought all kinds of goods from the Central Plains, swords, iron pots, tea, etc., in exchange for all kinds of precious furs in the hands of these people."

"That's why, as we pass along the way, not only the herdsmen of Maemin Abe welcome us, but also the Tungusic foresters who have not yet been incorporated into the empire are not afraid of us, and those who remain in the forest villages by the river will come by sleds and ask what goods we have brought with us."

"We took some things and traded some supplies with the tribes along the way, mostly dried meat and fish. I hate these things, they don't smell like dry firewood, but the Yakut dogs love them the most. We even hired some famous hunters from the villages along the way to guide them, and they knew a lot about the Nybuchu River, the Onen River, the Ergun River, and even the Heilong River, from the Inguoda River to the Shilka River. ”

"The price for us to hire these hunters is not too high, they are most interested in our swords, and they are also interested in our muskets, and we have succeeded in hiring them with a single person and a fine Miao knife, and they love the sharp and bright Miao knife. At the same time, I was very interested in muskets, and I promised them that if there was a battle, if they could help us, they would be able to give them a pistol if they killed one enemy at that time, and they would be very happy to kill two enemies and give them a musket. If we hadn't refused, we'd have had hundreds of Tunguska hunters behind our ranks by now. I had to turn them down, we didn't have time to wait for them to prepare, we needed to get to their destination early, and many of the hunters were poorly equipped, and I was worried that they would affect their speed on the way. ”

At this point, the line stopped.

Li Xin stopped his pen and raised his head.

Sorey turned his head and told him that it was getting early and that they were going to set up camp here.

It was impossible to travel at night, it was starting to get dark, and it was still some time before dark, but they needed to camp in advance, and even had to go hunting.

Along the way, they did not use much carrying, and most of them hunted and fished wherever they went.

Soray got off the sled and untied his deer. Several Evenks came. Like many Tunguskas, they were broad-faced, with unmarked facial contours, dark skin, and plain shortness. All Evenks are short, most of them are just over five feet, and few are taller than six feet. If converted to the new scale, most of them are less than 1.6 meters tall.

One by one, the reindeer were freed, and the Evenks were the older of the same clan on this trip, and Li Xin was already familiar with them. Know that they are the deer herds of this team.

Their main task is to herd the deer.

At the end of each day, when the camp began, the deer herders would saddle the reindeer and drive them to the nearby mountains to eat deer moss.

After driving the deer up the mountain, they just came back and left it alone, and in the morning, they went up the mountain to call the deer back.

Li Xin was startled when he first saw them drive the deer up the mountain, so that the deer could come back. Won't you run away?

His fears turned out to be unfounded. The next day, when it was still light, the voices of several deer herders came faintly from the mountain, and their voices were very peculiar. He was a kind of song, and they shouted for a while, and sure enough, the reindeer all came down the mountain.

Call the deer back to the camp and the deerherds will give the reindeer some feed one by one.

In Sorey's words. This is the tradition of the deer people that they have made. They domesticated the deer, harnessed the deer, and many times went out without any supplies. They hunted wherever they went, and the deer ate wherever they went.

This situation is largely due to Li Xin's cognition. Whether the Han people in the Central Plains march to fight or go out on horseback, they must prepare horse materials. However, this situation is somewhat similar to that of the Mongols, who generally do not bring much forage to fight, and wherever they go, at night, they add a horse stumbling to the horse's legs, and tie up two legs, so that the horse can walk, but not run, so that the horse can eat grass for a night at night, and can continue to run after eating some feed after dawn.

I didn't expect the reindeer of the Evenks to be like this, and even their deer were smarter and more obedient, and they didn't even need to be leashed, and they didn't have to look at it.

The deer herders drove the deer up the mountain, and the rest of the Evenks began to find a bend in the river and began to dig holes in the ice, where they were to fish.

Fishing under the ice is also a skill of many forest tribes, who will be very sophisticated in finding a bay, because the water in the bay is slow, and most of the fish under the ice are in the bay in winter. Fishing in a river bay never returns empty-handed.

At this time, the Yakuts carried bows and arrows and their dogs into the woods by the river.

The reindeer of the Evenks went straight to the mountains to eat moss, while they took the dogs into the forest to hunt, providing food for the dogs and for themselves.

The rest of the people began to take axes to the river to cut down trees, they camped directly on the ice, and then surrounded the sleds, it was a camp, and they did not have to worry about the attacks of bears and wolves, but at night it was cold, but they needed to build a fire to keep warm.

"From here down the river, another five hundred miles, there is a Nebuchu River confluence, at the confluence of the two rivers, there is a Nebuchu village, which is the settlement of the Evenks of the Sauron Bebu also known as the Arma tribe, which is very lively, and has always been a place where the nearby tribes trade, and the Jurchen tax collectors used to come there every year to collect taxes, and all the tribes had to go there to pay mink. There were also many Mongol and Jurchen and Han Chinese merchants who came there to buy mink. ”

Li Xin listened to the hunter's words, and drew another paragraph in his atlas, and he also carefully inquired about the hunters, marking the names of the nearby tribes, the location of the tribes, and the number of people.

Finally, he drew the Nebuchu River on the map, and drew a stockade mark at the confluence of the two rivers, with the three characters Nebuchu written on it, and indicated that it was a market town.

After adding a few more details to the map, Li Xin couldn't help but shake his head.

In the Central Plains, five hundred miles have already left the province, but in this northern country, five hundred miles is just a river. The Tunguska tribe here, a tribe may only have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, but they can be distributed in an area of thousands or even tens of thousands of miles.

But they are closely connected, and even if they are scattered, they can still grasp the location information of their own tribes. In the event of a major event, they can even support each other.

It's a magical northern country.

Li Xin froze into a dog, tightly wrapped in a thick leather robe.

Over there, a group of fishermen have managed to catch a lot of fish. The way they fish is also very simple, make a hole in the ice of the river bay and take out the hook. This hook is also more peculiar, a long rope is tied with many hooks, one at intervals, the hook is very thick, the hook is hung with meat, and then a stone is tied to the end of the rope, thrown into the ice hole, and after a while the hook can be raised.

It's always so easy to watch them fish, throw the hook down for a while, don't have to do anything, and after a while, you can catch a lot of big fish. As soon as these fish come out of the water, as soon as they unhook them, they have already frozen into hard ice.

After a while, those guys had caught a lot of fish, not only for people but also for dogs. They stopped fishing and started their daily routine.

These guys actually stripped naked, and then jumped into the ice cave full of ice ballast to take a bath, Li Xin looked at the rising white vapor from a distance, and felt cold for these guys who were laughing and laughing.

Kill him, he won't jump into the ice cave to take a bath in such a cold season, he is even a little strange, aren't these guys afraid of the cold?

He tried asking them, but they said it was warm to bathe in ice water.

Li Xin has only heard of building a snow hut in the snow, or playing a snow cave, no matter how cold the north wind is, staying in the snow cave and snow hut will be very warm.

He consulted with the natives, and they easily built him an igloo. It was about the size of a tent, and large chunks of snow were turned into snow bricks, which were slowly erected until they became a domed snow house, impermeable to the wind.

When I got inside, I felt very warm inside.

Since then, the first thing Li Xin does after camping every day is to build a snow house. Now he was able to build a snow igloo by himself, without relying on others.

However, apart from him, most of the other Yakuts, Evenks and even Mongols did not build snow huts or dig snow caves, they directly set up tents around the snowdrifts, and covered them with a few pieces of skin, so that they could sleep peacefully under bear skins.

Li Xin didn't care how those people laughed at him, anyway, he insisted on building a snow house, and every day when the snow house was built, several Han compatriots would squeeze in and spend the night together.

Only in the snow room can Li Xin sleep beautifully until dawn, and will not wake up repeatedly in the middle of the night. (To be continued.) )