"There are indeed gold mines, and it seems that there are quite a few of them, more than those of Buduya, and the map given by His Highness is really not wrong!"

On May 30, the eighth year of the Apocalypse, with a voice, tens of thousands of miles away in the south of the Levian continent, in the territory of South Africa in later generations, Xu Xiake and others held a piece of natural dog's head gold in their hands, ecstatic.

From the thirtieth day of the sixth year of the Apocalypse to today, in the eighth year of the Apocalypse, a full year and five months, Xu Xiake led people all the way through Ma Da Jiazuo (Somalia) - Mo Niande - Menba Cha - Black Country - Menshapik - Buduga and other countries.

The reason why it was delayed for so long was because of the second task that Zhu Youzhen gave to Xu Xiake and others......

Prospect for gold!

In Buduya, they followed Zhu Youjian's map to find a general location and directly found a gold vein with a large reserve, while in Gumesha, they found a gold mine with a larger reserve than the Buduya gold mine.

Xu Xiake looked at the "Yanshan Mine Book" summarized by Zhu Youzhen's experience of the miners, and just looked at the weight of the dog's head gold in his hand and the surrounding situation, he found out an approximate ore vein yield.

"There are at least tens of millions of taels of gold here......"

Xu Xiake's heart was not calm, he didn't dare to say this, for fear that someone in the fleet would be greedy.

However, Xu Xiake eventually underestimated the vein, which later became known as the Rand Goldfield, the world's largest gold mining area.

At a time when no one had discovered it, the amount of gold stored in this mining area reached a staggering 1.1 billion taels of gold.

It can be said that this is the place where Zhu Youzhen wants to become a vassal, and in North Africa, all he wants is the Suez Canal that can be built.

Taking this place, Qi Guo can be said to have no worries about food and clothing.

However, this is not the place that Zhu Youzhen wants most, because this place is too far from the center of the world.

If there were no steam engines, this place would be a good place to visit, but if there were steam engines, then Central America would be the place Zhu Youzhen wanted to go to.

Xu Xiake didn't know about Zhu Youzhen's thoughts, because in addition to exploring gold, his other task was to see the soil quality of Levia.

Just seeing that now, he has actually been disappointed.

"Lord, are we going to continue west?"

When the gold mine was discovered, everyone felt that their mission was complete and they could return to Daming.

After all, from the beginning of the sixth year of the Apocalypse to the present, he has not gone home for two and a half years, and everyone is thinking about how to go home.

What's more, along the way, they have actually seen that many parts of the Levian continent are not suitable for agriculture.

Because its operating costs and reclamation costs are too large, Xu Xiake and the others calculated that if they want to cultivate the land in eastern Levia into arable land, then one acre of land needs six slaves and five years of intensive cultivation and watering to successfully improve and achieve the quality of cultivated land in the area of the Daming Leizhou Peninsula.

It takes five years to use six slaves per acre of land, and the final yield per mu is only about one stone and four buckets a year.

With such a yield per mu, you need at least three acres of land to feed one person, and three million acres of land to feed one million people.

Three million acres of land require more than 18 million slaves, which even Xu Xiake is desperate to see.

But now they have found a place that is not bad, and that is this place with gold mines.

The region is the size of several provinces, and many coastal plains are used for cash crops, and the river valleys and plateaus in the north can be used for grazing and farming.

As far as agriculture is concerned, although there is a relative lack of arable land and, in Xu's view, there is not much rainfall and water is scarce, but the sheer grazing area can fully offset these factors.

After all the development of this place, it is more than enough to support the people, and after there are more people, they can also march northward and reclaim the coastal plain little by little.

Thinking of this, Xu Xiake also wiped the sweat on his forehead and said:

"Make a note of this first, and then we'll head back to the south, discuss the environment of western Levia with Xiyi in the south, and then set off for home!"

"Good!"

"Finally home!"

"Great......"

Xu Xiake's words made hundreds of people around cheer, they have been away from home for two and a half years, and even if they return now, it will take a year and a half, that is, four years.

Four years, how many four years can there be in life? Especially when there is no war, the average adult is only in his fifties.

Perhaps many of them will stop here in this life, and will not come back to explore a second time.

But no matter what, this experience will be remembered by them.

"Set up a monument here, and write 'Xu Xiake, the director of the Ming Rites Department, set up this monument by the order of King Qi'!"

Xu Xiake did not forget some of the things that Zhu Youzhen explained in his handwriting, and the stonemasons in the team also looked for a boulder around and began to erect a monument.

More than a dozen craftsmen spent seven days finally erecting the monument that Xu Xiake said, and after the stele was erected, hundreds of them began to return.

They walked south for more than two months, then released carrier pigeons, announced their return, and then pulled their sails with some news bought from the Europeans, and headed home......

"It's good to find it......"

On the ninth day of October, when Zhu Youzhen's voice sounded in a carriage heading towards the capital, it also represented the news he had obtained.

The carrier pigeons released by Xu Xiake and others in July arrived at the Xiaoxiyang Supervision Department a month later, and Huang Fei ordered someone to change the carrier pigeons, and the news arrived in the old port half a month later.

The guards of the old port relayed into carrier pigeons, released the carrier pigeons and flew them to Guangzhou, where they were sent to Zhu Youzhen seven days later at an expedited speed of 500 miles.

The news that took so much effort was actually only a hundred words, and it was still written with mouse whiskers, even if Zhu You checked it, he also needed to use a magnifying glass.

In more than 100 words, Xu Xiake briefly introduced the situation of Levia, and then summarized the situation of the whole Leviya that the whole is not suitable for farming, only the west and central south, and the southern coastal plain are suitable for farming, but the area is not large.

In these places, it took three slaves to reclaim one acre of land, and it took three years.

As for other places, it takes five years to use six or ten slaves, and it may cost a few taels of silver per acre to increase fertility.

This sentence basically broke Zhu Youzhen's idea of wanting to relocate millions of people.

The situation in Erivia, except for the two major mining areas in South Africa, which are worthy of Zhu Youzhen's efforts to establish a local propaganda department, does not seem to be suitable for him.

But......

"Fortunately, there has been ......a breakthrough in this thing," Zhu Youzhen looked at a handwritten note placed on the side of the carriage table.

That handwritten letter was written by Song Yingxing, and the content was very simple, that is, they had solved the problems of transmission, sealing, and pressure gauge, and the steam engine at this time was already able to produce power, but the power was seriously insufficient.

Zhu Youzhen remembers that when the steam engine was first created, the pressure was only 0.11~0.13 megapascals, and it only reached 0.35~0.7 megapascals in the early 19th century, so it was used as an industry, and then it reached 6~10 megapascals in 1920.

The Ming Dynasty did not have megapascals as a unit, but Song Yingxing, Bi Maokang, and Sun Yuanhua called the steam engine two versions and the power as force.

The force of the first version of the steam engine is one, while the force of the second version of the steam engine is two.

It doesn't seem to have a big breakthrough, but at the moment it can pump water with a height difference of more than five zhang, and it is enough to use it in the mine.

However, Zhu Youzhen was not satisfied, he wanted more than this level, to achieve a steam locomotive that can be used in industry, then the force of the steam engine must reach four to ten.

There are still many unbroken topics in the steam engine studied by Song Yingxing and others, such as the separation condenser, the setting of thermal insulation layer outside the cylinder, the lubrication of the piston with oil, the planetary gear, the parallel motion linkage mechanism, the centrifugal governor, the throttle valve, and so on.

When all these things are figured out, it won't be far from the steam locomotive.

Of course, if Song Yingxing and the others were complacent just because of this small breakthrough and came to inform themselves, Zhu Youzhen would not be so happy.

What he was really happy about was not the progress of the steam engine, but other scientific and technological advances.

Under the leadership of Bi Maokang, the blast furnace group overcame the problem of the blast furnace, so that the height of the blast furnace in Daming reached two feet and four feet, and the iron could be produced from 12,000 jin to 14,000 jin in one day and night.

At the same time, the amount of iron produced by European blast furnaces was less than 3,000 catties, and the amount of iron produced by Daming's blast furnaces was four to five times that of them.

If this technology solves the iron-making speed, then another gunpowder technology makes Zhu Youzhen ecstatic.

After all, mercury thunderate has been studied through trial and error, and this ratio is as high as 1,427 times, and its appearance will represent the appearance of detonators in mining areas and the appearance of fire cap initiators.

Blast furnaces, detonators and steam pumps, which can increase the iron smelting technology and production of the Ming Dynasty, and the appearance of mercury thunderate will contribute to the emergence of the firing gun and the great increase in the range of the artillery.

However, even the people in the Armaments Institute cannot know how much time it takes to light up the above technologies one by one.

In addition, if the steam engine cannot quickly enter the third version, then even if the fire pistol is invented, it will affect the speed of equipment due to the inability to standardize production.

In terms of time, Jianyu may not be able to wait for the appearance of the firing gun, but the improved gunpowder can increase the range of the artillery currently used by the Ming army, but it still needs to ensure the stability of the initiating charge after the experiment of the Armaments Institute.

The increased range of artillery could play a decisive role in attacking the captured stone forts.

"How's the fertilizer farm going?"

Zhu You asked without raising his head, and outside the window of the carriage, Lu Wenzhao, who was riding a horse with the car, also responded:

"Sun Shilang has been supervising, Songjiang Mansion has 200,000 catties of chemical fertilizer every day, the main material is dried guano transported by sea from Huangdian, and 9,000 merchant ships can transport back more than 300,000 catties at a time."

"After the Navy Governor's Mansion opened up the routes of several guano islands, Huangdian has a hundred guano boats to and fro."

"As for the Shuntian Mansion in the north, it mainly relies on collecting the gold juice of the people in the capital to make chemical fertilizer."

"The nine fertilizer farms in Shuntian produce more than 300,000 catties of fertilizer every day, and according to Sun Shilang's words, there is no problem to meet the needs of 3 million acres of fields."

"At present, the Department of Agriculture is also taking over the golden juice of the counties in Beizhili, hiring night fragrant men, and preparing for fertilizer farms, but the speed cannot be improved."

"According to the household registration in each county, even if I monopolize more than 1,600 counties in the Ming Dynasty, plus the output of Guano Island, at most I can bless less than 30 million acres of land."

Daming has more than 830 million mu of land, and at present, chemical fertilizers can only bless 30 million mu of land, so that the grain output of these lands can increase by 10 to 20 percent.

Such a scale made Zhu Youzhen not very satisfied, and if he wanted to further study urea, phosphate fertilizer, potassium fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer and other chemical fertilizers, then he would need continuous research from the Armaments Institute.

Zhu Youzhen only knew that phosphate fertilizer was related to phosphate rock, and although he didn't remember much about phosphate rock, he still remembered Lianyungang, that is, the Jinping phosphate mine in Haizhou.

However, the Armaments Institute is not very thorough in the research of phosphate rocks, mainly because no one has done these things.

At present, Daming is crossing the river by feeling the stones, and it is naturally very difficult.

Such difficulty makes Zhu Youzhen sometimes want the Europeans to get these things out first, and it is better to cross the river by touching the Europeans than to let the Europeans cross the river by touching the Ming Dynasty.

"Let Sun Yuanhua focus mainly on phosphate mineralization and phosphate fertilizer, and leave the affairs of the Agricultural Department to the people below him to do."

Zhu Youzhen doesn't have too many scientific research talents in his hands, but there is one person he cares about very much.

This person was recommended by Sun Yuanhua and was Wang Hui of Guangping Mansion.

Zhu Youzhen has a little impression of this person, but I can't remember much of the specific impact, but I think that he can be recommended by Sun Yuanhua, and he should also have his advantages, so Zhu Youzhen didn't study too deeply.

After conferring the title of Dr. Hanlin and the false title, he asked Jinyiwei to find this man and take him to the Armaments Institute.

"Your Highness, I'm going to enter Baoding Mansion soon, are you resting in Baoding tonight?"

While Zhu Youzhen was pondering, Cao Bianjiao rode his horse back from the former army and asked Zhu Youzhen on the carriage, and Zhu Youxiao also bowed slightly: "Just rest in Baoding, and inquire about the situation in the capital by the way." ”

Zhu Youzhen did not rush to the capital, because he knew that he would abolish the "Runbi Silver", as well as adjust the retention of 30% to 10%, and the matter of summing up the officials' silver, which would inevitably cause an uproar in the capital.

He needs to observe carefully before deciding to enter Beijing.

"Yes!" Cao Bianjiao saluted, and then rode back to the front army, while Zhu Youzhen continued to bow his head and deal with the piles of notes.

It's just that when he was dealing with the music, compared to him, the household department of the capital was particularly lively.

Those who graduated early this year, as well as the Yanshan students of the past three years, are actually the most elite group of people who have entered the household department.

At present, there are 3,000 Beijing officials and 60,000 Beijing officials, and the household department has 600 Beijing officials and 6,000 Beijing officials.

With so many officials, the household yamen has also expanded a lot, and the scale of the Luan Jiaku after the six departments is comparable to half of the six, but now the Luan Jiaku has been relocated, and the original address has been vacated to the household department.

The expansion of the household yamen actually proves that the Ming Dynasty is paying close attention to taxation.

Originally, the household department only had the responsibilities of land, household registration, taxation, and salary, and was divided into two capitals and thirteen provinces.

However, after several expansions by Zhu Youjian, the household department is now divided into 11 divisions, including the Field Division, the Household Registration Division, the Field Endowment Division, the Commercial Taxation Division, the Miscellaneous Division, the Municipal Shipping Division, the Salt Division, the Tea Division, the Wine Division, the Salary Division, and the Disaster Relief Division.

Under Shangshu, it is no longer a simple left and right waiter, but is divided into left and right waiters and eleven waiters, a total of thirteen waiters.

With such a large scale, the tasks of each division are very heavy, and the busiest one recently is the salary division.

Since Bi Ziyan returned to the capital, the food division has been lively, with the scribes coming and going and the constant coming and going of the pond horses, as well as the endless sound of abacus every day, all represent the busyness here.

Everyone is paying attention to the salary, and the reason is the recent buzz about the official salary.

In the Salary Division, almost no one can meddle in, except for Zhu Youzhen, Zhu Youxiao, and Bi Ziyan.

The Ming Dynasty officials' Yulu was a confused account from the Yongle period, and in the Xuande period, this confused account was further aggravated.

Later, Hongzhi and Wanli continued to add accounts on the basis of this kind of confused account, which made the already confused account even more confused.

"Officials Dinglu", this is the outside world's current name for what the Salary Division is doing, everyone knows that once the officials are Dinglu, the days of the former officials will be gone forever.

But even if they knew, no one rushed to stop and delay.

Without him, because the entire Salary Division was guarded by the soldiers and horses of the Daxing Battalion, and the families of the twenty-six officials and five hundred and twenty-seven scribes of the Salary Division were monitored by the Jinyi Guard.

The sound of the abacus kept beating, and the sound was so loud that it could be heard by the other government officials and yamen of the household department and the other five departments of the six departments.

"This abacus is not in his heart, but in my heart!"

In the ministry, some officials kept complaining, and Cui Chengxiu, who was doing business, was also made numb by the vaguely audible sound of the abacus.

He got up and walked, but he couldn't think of anything but to sit down again.

Like him, there were officials from other ministries, and when these officials were sitting still, Bi Ziyan got the results of the first "Official Dinglu" in his hands.

"Shangshu, this is the Dinglu book of Beijing City, this is the old book......"

In the Salary Division, as the two books in the Salary Lang were handed over, the two books that the old god had also received from Bi Ziyan, who was there, began to compare them.

The Ming officials' salaries are not low, Bi Ziyan already knows this, but he is still curious, when the Ming officials' salaries and benefits are all figured out, how much money the Ming officials have.

In his curiosity, the old book was the first to be opened, and the amount of money revealed on it was shocking.

[Zhengyi Pin is 522 taels of silver, 30 stones of free grain, 15 taels of folded color, 30 taels of exempt, 10 taels of silver, and ...... of bad income]

The long variety of benefits is dazzling, and when it comes to the income of various bad rules, the color of silver is even more jaw-dropping.

When Bi Ziyan saw the end, the total income of Zhengyipin actually reached 1,232 taels of silver!

"If you take so much silver just for a false title, I'm afraid there are more people below......"

Looking at Zhengyipin's silver, Bi Ziyan's heart couldn't help but drum, after all, Zhengyipin has no specific official position, most of them are fictitious titles, and a fictitious title can get so much silver, wouldn't those real power official positions ......

Bi Ziyan continued to watch, but the more he looked at it, the more frightened he became, especially the bad rules between legal and illegal, which made him even more dumbfounded.

Bad rules income, this is the largest proportion of the income of officials in all dynasties.

In fact, the bad rules were tacitly approved by the previous dynasties, and the income was between "illegal" and "legal", and it belonged to the "political deformity" lubricated between the various government offices and officials inside and outside Beijing.

For this kind of income, Bi Ziyan is actually not surprised, but he didn't expect this kind of income to reach such a high proportion in some people.

The data used by the Salary Division to count the income of the bad rules and the official Dinglu were all calculated through the accounts of the Beijing officials and foreign officials who had just been raided, and there may be errors in this calculation, but there is no difference.

Among the various accounts, there are many kinds of bad rules and regulations of officials in Beijing, and there are more than 300 kinds of bad rules and regulations in the prefectures and counties of Beizhili alone.

Among these many bad rules, "envy" is the biggest project.

The so-called "consumption" refers to the loss in the process of collecting money and grain, and the loss of grain includes warehouse consumption, rat consumption, finch consumption, wet consumption, lifting consumption, transportation consumption, etc.

The so-called "envy" is the balance of these losses.

According to the regulations of the imperial court, the additional levy can reach one-tenth to three-tenths, and on these accounts provided by Jinyiwei, Bi Ziyan can clearly find that some corrupt officials have collected more than double the amount of money collected from the people.

What is this concept?

The people of the Ming Dynasty are endowed with 30 endowments, an acre of grain and a stone of land, logically speaking, only need to pay about five catties of grain, but if the local Beijing officials in the north of Zhili add levy and consumption, this field endowment will reach ten catties of rice and wheat, that is, the field endowment has changed from thirty endowments to 1 to fifteen endowments in disguise.

Not only that, but part of this consumption was actually used to collect the public expenses of the yamen.

Because the public funds allocated by the imperial court to the yamen were insufficient, they could only be solved in the income of the consumption of envy, but most of the consumption was still divided among the officials.

Take Bi Ziyan's hands, the account book of the county order of Wuqing County, Shuntianfu, Beizhili, Wuqing Yamen collected all kinds of money and grain from the people of Wuqing, and for every hundred taels, he took 30 taels to Wuqing Yamen, and paid 70 taels of silver to the capital, which is the proportion.

In the actual collection, there are more than 12,000 households in Wuqing County, with a population of 60,000, more than 34,000 men and more than 26,000 women.

In the process of collection, each cashier is two or four dollars, plus one or two or six dollars, and four taels are charged, do you think this is over? Not really.

The Ding tax is the Ding tax, and there is also a field endowment, and in this field endowment, the field is 13 wen per mu, and the Wuqing Yamen levies and consumes 12 wen, a total of 25 wen, and the land in Wuqing County is 154,000 mu, and there are mountains, ponds, forests and other places that also have to collect taxes and consume more.

Only these few items of additional consumption, the small Wuqing County will levy 72,432 taels of silver, almost 122 yuan per capita, according to Wuqing County's recruitment of 20 wen a day, the people have to give the government two months of free work every year, one of which is the additional consumption.

However, in addition to taxes, the more than 30,000 taels of silver obtained from the additional consumption should be divided into three equals, 10,000 taels of silver will be sent to the government, 10,000 taels of silver will be returned to the county, and the remaining 10,000 taels of silver will be issued to the assistants, miscellaneous teachers and officials in the county government.

The final result was that Wuqingzhi County levied 60,000 taels of silver and paid 30,000 taels to the imperial court, and the government embezzled the 10,000 taels of fire consumption with "legal" bad rules, Wuqingzhi County embezzled 10,000 taels, and Wuqing County's Zuo Er, Jiao Zao and Xu officials embezzled 10,000 taels of silver.

"Levy 60,000 taels on the people, the court will take 30,000, and they themselves will take 30,000 by bad rules! They are so daring! How dare they ......"

Bi Ziyan trembled with anger, especially when he saw the silver situation of Zhou Shan, the order of Wuqing County.

[Wuqing County ordered Zhou Shan, 45 taels of Zhengyi, 5 taels of silver for errand soldiers, 5 taels of free grain, 3 taels of free ding, and more than 10,000 taels of bad rules......]

"Bang-"

"Check! Keep checking it for me! The old man wants to see how many bad rules they have made! ”

Bi Ziyan slammed the document on the table, slapped the table and yelled at the officials in the yamen, and the voice made everyone swallow their saliva and feel afraid.

For example, Bi Ziyan of the Hubu Shangshu was so angry, it was hard to believe what kind of mood these two supremes would be when these documents were placed in front of the King of Qi and the emperor......

(End of chapter)