"Grandpa instructed that all the refined gold in the mine be brought out and escorted to Huaiyuan by me for great use."

On January 5, 1730, at three o'clock in the afternoon, as soon as Gao Wanliangfu, the treasurer of the Yizhou Trading Company in Huaiyuan, arrived at the Guangfeng Gold Mine owned by the trading company, he immediately summoned Zhan Kaifu, the director of the mine, and instructed him to prepare to deliver to him the gold collected and refined in the mine.

"All the gold? The big shopkeeper ......, how could the grandfather need to withdraw so much gold? When Zhan Kaifu heard this, he was taken aback.

"Why, you dare to question Grandpa's decision?" Gao Wanliang glared at the other party, and said in a rather unkind tone: "As for what the grandfather wants to do, how can you and I have the qualifications to ask questions?" ”

Hmph, don't think that you are the brother-in-law of the head of the Yiwang Mansion, so you can't figure out your own identity and dare to question the master's decision.

As the brother of King Yi, Qi Siyi began to be in charge of the palace's Xuanzhou industry as early as more than ten years ago, including gold mining, fur trading, coal trading, grain trade, and the reselling, wholesale and retail of foreign commodities (including local industrial manufactured products), and even for a long time, he will be stationed in Huaiyuan City to supervise and manage the operation and development of many businesses, which is the financial manager of the entire Yiwang Mansion.

After Huaiyuan City and the Xuanzhou Governor's Office failed to negotiate tax reductions and exemptions, Qi Siyi was angry and didn't bother to argue with local colonial officials, and decided to go to Hanzhou to participate in the new emperor's enthronement ceremony, and put more effort into the royal family and cabinet.

As long as you get rid of the local dignitaries and high-ranking officials, you are a small governor of an overseas territory, and you dare to show your teeth at my Yiwang Mansion again?

However, to carry out a "public relations lobbying" of the royal family and many domestic elites, it is indispensable to spend money. Originally, at the behest of King Yi, he went to Chang'an to meet the new emperor, and Qi Siyi carried more than 100,000 yuan worth of gold, precious furs, Yinzhou old ginseng (that is, American ginseng) and other local specialties, which filled a large ship. In addition to some of these "gifts" intended for His Majesty the Emperor, some of them were intended for "friendship" with cabinet ministers and officials in major ministries.

may feel that the money is still a little small, so he sent Gao Wanliang to Guangfeng Gold Mine to bring all the refined gold to Hanzhou.

I don't believe it, if the golden gold is smashed over, no one will speak for my Yiwang Mansion!

The gold mine belonging to Yiwangfu is the second largest mine in the entire Guangfeng area, and in the case of decreasing gold reserves, it can still mine and refine about two tons of gold every year by digging deep pits and blasting gold-bearing rock formations, worth more than 250,000 yuan, becoming one of the largest financial resources in Yizhou.

Perhaps due to local protectionism, or the huge amount of gold mining income obtained by the Yiwang Mansion every year, the Xuanzhou Governor's Mansion rejected the demands of the trading companies affiliated to the Yiwang Mansion to increase and expand the gold mining area several times, and instead sold the mining area to the local trading companies and powerful gold mining associations, which made the Yiwang Mansion hate itchy.

The Xuanzhou Governor's Mansion had reason to believe that the Yiwang Mansion would secretly transport gold out of Xuanzhou through its own resources and strength, so as to evade the collection of gold and mineral taxes.

Rather, it would be better to keep the dwindling reserves of gold as much as possible in the local area, which would be of great benefit to enriching the local merchants and the common people, or increasing the revenue of the Governorate.

There are two gold mining areas in Yiwangfu, thousands of meters apart, covering a total area of about four or five square kilometers. The mine is full of deep pits, and when it rains, dozens of pumps must be used to drain the water day and night before workers can continue to dig for gold.

A stream from the Guangfeng River is adulterated with numerous toxic substances that exceed the limit, especially mercury, which is used to extract gold from quartz and stone, so high that there is almost no grass on either side of the stream. After eating the fish caught in the stream, some miners also fell ill with strange diseases, which could not be cured even by Langzhong in the city, and finally died in the mines.

Every day, the mine's managers and hundreds of miners use horse-drawn trucks carrying storage tanks to the Guangfeng River, several kilometers away.

By the way, in order to protect the safety of the river and ensure the water needs of tens of thousands of migrants in the surrounding area, the local government strictly ordered the mines not to discharge gold-refined wastewater into the river.

It's not like everyone has no water to drink in order to pursue wealth, right?

"In March this year, more than 60 miners' contracts will be full." After Zhan Kaifu arranged for someone to extract the gold, he began to complain to Gao Wanliang, "At that time, the manpower of the two mines will be insufficient. Therefore, we have to continue to recruit more people to complete the amount of gold mining set by the prince. Otherwise, if the task is not completed at the end of the year, there will be no good fruit to eat! ”

"When all the miners expire, they have to leave?" When Gao Wanliang heard this, his brows couldn't help frowning.

"Not really." Zhan Kaifu sighed: "Except for three or five who want to return to North Korea and Qin, most of the rest want to use the money on hand to sell a piece of land in Xuanzhou and prepare to settle down." You can't imagine how obsessed they are with owning a piece of land of their own. Alas, who called the land of Yinzhou worthless! Tens of hundreds of dollars can buy a small farm, which does not allow those people to go crazy to buy land and buy real estate. ”

"In that case, can you coax them to Yizhou to buy land?" Gao Wanliang shook his head helplessly, and then asked: "My land in Yizhou is cheaper, less than two yuan." If you can get them all back, it will be equivalent to the money they earned, and after a turn, they will return to our Yizhou. ”

"I'm afraid they don't believe it! Two yuan per acre of land, which is less than one-fifth of the land price of the Qin State, is enough to make them crazy. Oh, tell them that our land in Yizhou is less than two yuan, and most of them will suspect that we are using deceptive means to kidnap them to Yizhou and swallow their money. ”

As we all know, working in the mine is not an easy job, not only the labor intensity is high, but also the environment is harsh, and in the past five years, both physically and psychologically, it is very damaging.

In addition, in order to complete the mining task, the mine sometimes uses all kinds of rough methods to treat the miners in the management process, scolding, beating, scolding, corporal punishment, and even deducting wages, so that both "labor and management" have accumulated endless contradictions and resentments.

At the end of the labor contract, the vast majority of miners choose to leave the mines, and with the remuneration they have accumulated over the years, they can't wait to apply for land from the local governorate and live the life of a free and easy small farmer.

What, you Yizhou are also selling land to solicit immigrants to settle down?

Are you sure you won't coax us over, and then go to the border of your Yizhou, directly close the door and beat the dogs, deprive us of our money, and then continue to "enslave" us?

"You can advise them a few more times, and it's best to get them back to Yizhou." Gao Wanliang said: "You can tell them that as long as they settle down in my Yizhou land, Yiwangfu can help them marry a daughter-in-law." …… Moreover, she is also a serious Han daughter-in-law. ”

——

On January 16, Chao'an Fort (present-day Roseville, California, 30 kilometers northeast of Sacramento).

Liu Azhu sat on the bumpy flatbed ox cart, looking around at the surrounding situation, and peeking at the man in front of him from time to time, feeling both panic and dazed.

This man will be his husband in the future?

From the time the civil magistrate of Chao'anbao handed her over to this man, her future fate was sealed, she would settle in this place 108,000 miles away from her hometown, and become the wife of a man she had never seen or understood.

Panic is more of a natural fear of an unfamiliar environment.

Being at a loss is the uncertainty of future life.

She didn't have much rejection about marrying a strange man. Even in my hometown, isn't it also the order of my parents and the words of the matchmaker? To a large extent, she also doesn't know what kind of man she will marry in the future.

What's more, in a poor hometown, if you marry a local, the dowry that your parents can receive is also very meager.

Half a fan of pork, or a few bags of grain, can be exchanged for a healthy girl.

And her parents "sold" her to the tooth man, but she could get a full five pieces of Daqin silver dollars!

This is enough for the family to chew grain for more than half a year.

When boarding the big ship bound for Yinzhou, she had the urge to jump into the water and swim back to shore.

Yin Zhou, a remote and wild place tens of thousands of miles away from home, is the end of the world.

Although, some people say that there is endless gold and wealth, and there are also fertile fields and pastures everywhere, and they can live a life that will never go hungry.

But Liu Azhu was still scared to death.

With such a long distance, I will never be able to return to Qin, I will never see my parents and siblings again, and I will never be able to taste the mountains and rivers of my hometown again.

Even if she died silently in Yinzhou, no one would bring the news to her family.

People who leave their hometowns are cheap, like duckweed, not to mention a weak woman like her who was "sold" to Yinzhou.

What a tragic fate it would be if his own "man" harshly criticized and abused her, and even treated her as a slave, cow and horse!

"Are you cold?" The man who was driving the car suddenly turned his head and asked in a sullen voice.

"I ...... I...... No...... Not cold. Liu Azhu hung his head and replied in a low voice.

"Not cold? …… Let's wear more. The man shuddered when he saw Liu Azhu's delicate body, and couldn't help but smile, and threw a mink fur on his body to her, "Although it rarely snows here in winter, the weather is still a little cold. I was dressed for a good life, and I was sick from the cold, but it was not easy to find a doctor for diagnosis and treatment. ”

Grandma's, the daughter-in-law who bought it for 30 yuan can't freeze to death!

When Xu Guangtian thought of this, he immediately shook the reins with both hands, so that the cow could run a little faster. When I got back to the farm, I lit the fire and kept my woman warm.

Hey, your own woman!

Although the entire Yinzhou region, including Xuanzhou, has a population of hundreds of thousands after almost 40 years of colonization and development, the ratio of men and women is extremely unbalanced.

After all, coming to the wild land of Yinzhou brought about pioneering, men have natural advantages, whether it is government organizations, private trading companies and mines, and most of them are young and middle-aged men in the immigration process.

Not to mention, the hustle and bustle of the gold rush more than 20 years ago made Yinzhou a man's adventure paradise.

Of course, once immigrants gain a firm foothold and eat and drink without worrying, they will also feel what are the shortcomings in life, to fill the empty and lonely inner world.

Many first-generation immigrants began to look at local indigenous women, or took iron and salt and spices as a dowry, and married a woman from the indigenous tribe who looked good, or they formed groups of three or five, armed with muskets and knives, and directly snatched a woman back to warm the bed in the process of fighting and killing with the indigenous tribes for land and minerals.

Originally, I thought that the indigenous people in these places were not civilized and were still in the stage of primitive clan society, plus similar races, wondering if they could be assimilated and absorbed. But they never thought that because of the harsh environment they were in and they fought with wild beasts all year round, they had created a martial (unruly) character. This makes it impossible for immigrants to come to Yinzhou to arrest them as "helpers" as they did in Nanyang, let alone arrest women as wives.

Some of the more fierce indigenous women, after being forcibly captured, will not only sneak attack and assassinate their "husbands", but even strangle their own children with their own hands, which makes the immigrants deeply frightened.

According to rough estimates, just over 10,000 immigrants have been married to indigenous women in the entire Yinzhou region over the past few decades – but given the small size of the West Coast's indigenous population, this figure is also quite staggering, and very few of these intermarried families have been able to live together.

Differences in language, culture, customs, lifestyles and many other aspects, as well as the competition for land and resources between each other, and the vendetta of ethnic groups, make there still a deep estrangement and antagonism between immigrants and indigenous people.

Under such circumstances, buying and selling women from Qin, Korea, Japan, and even Annam, which were traditional Chinese civilization countries, became a large-scale business in the Yinzhou region.

Depending on where the woman comes from, the price varies. The Han people, who are the main body of immigrants in Yinzhou, naturally hope that their wives are also Han, which correspondingly pushes up the price of women in the Qin State.

Normally, immigrants submit their purchase needs to the local resettlement officer and then pay half of the deposit. Subsequently, the local government would entrust trading companies or merchants who traded in the Pacific to travel to specific countries and regions according to specific needs, "recruit" young women, and after collecting enough (the actual number would generally slightly exceed the required quantity due to the losses on the way), they would be loaded on ships and shipped back to the mainland of Yinzhou.

Once at the port, the colonial government would pay for the number of people who arrived, and then send it to the settlements to deliver it to the immigrants who requested it, while collecting the other half of the fee.

Xu Guangtian is one of these many immigrants who bought wives, and although he did not catch up with the lively gold rush, after serving for three years in the government-built cantonment farm, he received 50 acres of land for free in Chao'anbao and became a national of the overseas territory of a large country.

After another ten years of hard work, he not only paid off the loans of the local government (mainly livestock and agricultural machinery), but also successively purchased more than 50 acres of land, raised more than 30 cattle and sheep, and purchased a small farm.

This little day is getting better, so I think about whether to marry a daughter-in-law and give birth to a few babies, otherwise, who will Lao Tzu's hard-worked belongings pass on to in the end?

So, he took out his savings for many years, borrowed some money from the villagers in the fortress, and "applied" a daughter-in-law from the local government.

A total of fourteen women were sent to the entire Chao'an Fort, and nine of them asked for Han women like him. Moreover, they were of different appearances, different heights, some were mediocre, some were gentle and beautiful, and for the sake of fairness, the civil magistrates numbered the women and asked them to draw lots to determine the respective belonging of the women.

It's also my luck, before I drew lots, I fell in love with a thin and beautiful woman at a glance. After making a wish to the gods and Buddhas, his wish came true, and God made this woman his dream daughter-in-law.

"I'll be nice to you later." Xu Guangtian drove the flatbed ox cart, looked back at the woman behind him, and felt relieved to see that the fur fur she had thrown over had been worn on her body.

"Hmm......" Liu Azhu replied, looked up at his man, and then lowered his head again.

"The fields on both sides belong to our family." Xu Guangtian stretched out his hand and pointed to the land on both sides of the ox cart, and said proudly: "After the beginning of spring, we will turn over the land on the right side together, and take a year off. Oh, look over there, it's our barn. In spring and autumn, there are several more cattle and sheep. Hey, it's all in order, but it's all money. ”

"Oh......"

"You don't need to do much of the heavy work in the field, on weekdays, you just drive the cattle to the meadow at the edge of the forest to graze. Well, all year round, we can only rest in winter. By the way, follow me, you don't need to worry about hunger anymore, you can eat wheat noodles and rice, and if you want meat, you can slaughter a chicken,...... It doesn't hurt to kill a sheep. Rest assured, it will make you eat for nothing. …… Inside, I've bought you a few pieces of good fabric in advance, and when the time comes, you can make yourself some new clothes. …… Look, it's going to be there soon! ”

Liu Azhu looked at his man in a daze, listening to him talk to himself, and was a little distracted for a while.

He seems to care about himself.

"Woo Woo ......"

Suddenly there was a rapid barking of dogs, and occasionally the neighing of cattle and sheep, and the man in front of him immediately grabbed the leash of the oxen, then jumped out of the cart, turned and took out a musket from the cart behind.

"You sit in the car and don't get down. …… I'll go over and have a look. Xu Guangtian solemnly instructed.

"You...... Be careful. Liu Azhu said subconsciously.

"Hehe...... Xu Guangtian grinned, "Don't worry, your man can't die!" ”

(End of chapter)