Bringing the Railway to Daming

Chapter 190: Beiyang Channel Layout, Ice and Fire Island Big Bear Tribe [Please Subscribe]

A few days later.

The first long-distance exploration fleet arrived at the fist-shaped bay on the east coast of Ice and Fire Island.

After entering the bay, Chen Zhongming and others compared factors such as wind strength, temperature changes, and vegetation on the shore, and prepared to set up a transit camp on the north shore.

Unexpectedly, after they had been sailing along the northern shore of the bay for half a day and had not yet determined the specific location for setting up the transit camp, a rumbling and dull sound came from the northwest.

Because the distance was far, the noise heard by the people in the fleet was not loud and they were not scared.

Zhang Bingyi looked in the direction of the sound and saw a red light shining in the sky among the mountains in the northwest, and then a cloud-like smoke rose up that was visible to the naked eye.

He said excitedly, "This must be the volcanic eruption mentioned in the documents given by the court!"

As he said this, he wanted to use a telescope to observe.

But Chen Zhongming is using it right now, so why would he lend it to him?
Through the telescope, the image of the volcanic eruption in the distance is clearer.

All he could see were flashes of fire in the smoke, with the smoke billowing and rising. Because the distance was far and the mountains were blocking the view, this was all Chen Zhongming could see with his telescope.

After looking for several breaths, he saw Zhang Bingyi next to him getting impatient, so he handed the telescope over.

Zhang Bingyi also watched for a long time, until the volcano stopped moving, and then he returned the telescope.

"According to the documents provided by the imperial court, this island was named Ice and Fire Island because it has many volcanoes and glaciers."

"We've seen the volcano today, but we haven't seen the glacier yet. They say it's located among the high mountains in the north. I really want to see it!"

Chen Zhongming said seriously, "We have military duties to attend to, so we don't have time to go to the north to see the glaciers."

Zhang Bingyi was at a loss for words. "I was just saying that. I'm not really going. Commander Chen, please don't take it seriously."

Chen Zhongming asked, "Since there's a volcanic eruption, do we still need to set up camp on the north shore?"

Zhang Bingyi pondered and said, "The north shore of the bay is indeed more sheltered from the wind than the south shore. Judging from the vegetation, it is also warmer."

"As for the volcanic eruption, it's in the northwest mountains, so I don't know how far away it is from here. I don't expect it to affect here."

"Look at the forest on that shore. There are many tall ancient trees and some animals. If the volcanic eruption could endanger this place, there would not be such a scene."

Upon hearing this, Chen Zhongming used a telescope to look at the scenery on the north bank and found that it was indeed the case.

Not to mention the tall trees, some elks, brown bears, or sea beasts that appeared at the edge of the forest, noticed the fleet approaching the shore, and they all stood there staring blankly, as if they had never seen people or ships before and had no vigilance at all.

"Then let's find a suitable place on the north bank to set up a transit camp."

After Chen Zhongming gave the order, the fleet ships separated and explored along the coast. After another half day, they found a natural deep-water harbor in the middle of the north shore of the bay before dark and anchored there.

The next day.

The commander of the exploratory fleet, Chen Zhongming, the eunuch supervising the army, Wang Shun, the deputy commander, Zhang Bingyi, and Li Mingqi, led the fleet officers and soldiers and the accompanying garrison troops ashore to build a transit camp.

Although the First Long-distance Exploration Fleet consisted of only about 3,000 people, it carried two thousand households of elite garrison troops.

These two thousand elite garrison troops were drawn from the coastal garrisons in Shandong and Hebei, and were relatively better able to adapt to the harsh cold climate and life by the sea.

During the previous voyage, the exploration fleet continuously deployed these elite garrison troops on board to build observation posts, supply stations, and transit camps.

Only one garrison troop with a small flag was left at the observation post, and one garrison troop with a hundred households was left at the supply station.

The transit camp is the most important, and at least three hundred-household garrison troops will be left behind, and a deputy thousand-household garrison will be in charge of camp affairs.

According to the court's plan, five transit camps will be established in the first half of the Beiyang Passage, namely Jeju Island, Sado Island, Ezo Island, Kuwu Island and Binghuo Island.

Among them, the transit camps on Jeju Island and Sado Island are the largest, and both will have garrisons under their jurisdiction of at least three thousand households.

The transit camps on Ezo Island and Binghuo Island are of medium size, and plans are to set up a thousand-household unit.

As for Kuwu Island, the garrison there will be the smallest, with only three hundred households.

After these garrison troops were stationed, their initial food and other daily necessities were all supplied by the imperial court, but they had to obtain relatively stable supplies locally within a few years to reduce their dependence on the imperial court's food and fodder supply.

You can reclaim land for farming, hunt, fish, collect taxes from local indigenous tribes, and trade with them.

Although Binghuo Island will only be stationed with a garrison of 1,000 households in the future, its importance exceeds that of Ezo Island because it will be the last transit camp in the western Pacific when the Ming fleet heads to North America.

It was only the beginning of July, and there were still several months before the severe cold arrived, so the fleet officers and soldiers, accompanying garrison troops, craftsmen and other personnel went directly to build the permanent camp.

The first long-distance exploration fleet consisted of more than 3,000 people, with more than 500 accompanying garrison troops and 100 to 200 craftsmen and other personnel.

Excluding the two coastal exploration teams and the exploration team on the road, more than 3,000 people worked together. With sufficient tools and an inexhaustible supply of giant trees in the forest on the shore, the transit camp was naturally built at a very fast speed.

A few days later, a team responsible for exploring the land returned and reported that they had discovered an indigenous tribe about a day's journey away. Chen Zhongming immediately decided to send people to contact them.

Zhang Bingyi said, "For now, we must focus on establishing a trading relationship with the island's natives. Once they understand that we are from the Ming Dynasty and know how powerful the Ming Dynasty is, it won't be too late to persuade them to submit."

"I'm afraid that ordinary people wouldn't be able to do this well, and it would easily cause misunderstandings with the natives, so I'll let my subordinates go."

The imperial court had already made instructions on how to deal with different types of natives.

Therefore, Chen Zhongming nodded after hearing Zhang Bingyi's words, "Then I'll leave this matter to Zhang Tongzhi - be careful on your journey, safety is the most important thing."

"My subordinate understands."

Afterwards, Zhang Bingyi made some preparations and took a hundred soldiers, led by an exploration team, to visit the native tribe.

The next day, Zhang Bingyi and others saw the indigenous tribe mentioned by the exploration team.

The tribe lived in a valley sheltered from the wind, its houses low, mostly made of crude logs and stones. There were many hides and dried meats drying in the fields, but no crops or livestock were visible, suggesting that these natives mostly relied on hunting for a living.

Li Jun, a captain standing nearby, licked his dry lips and said, "These natives are completely clueless. There aren't many of them, probably only a few dozen men. If we rush in, we can capture them all."

Zhang Bingyi took one look at Li Jun and knew that this centurion was most likely targeting the women in the native tribe.

These garrison troops have been sailing on the sea with the exploration fleet for several months, and their families have not returned. I'm afraid they are all very anxious now - before on Ezo Island, there was an incident where the exploration team attacked the native tribes and robbed native women.

Although the soldiers who did this were severely reprimanded and even whipped by Chen Zhongming afterwards, it was obviously difficult to curb this trend.

In fact, not to mention these soldiers who came from the lower classes, even Zhang Bingyi, who came from a scholarly family, was feeling very frustrated now.

But the reason why he was transferred from a civil official to a military general and was assigned to the exploration fleet was to restrain the soldiers and prevent the military discipline from becoming too corrupt. He would not ruin his future for a momentary desire.

He snorted, "If we do as you say, how are we going to deal with them?"

The military generals in the early Ming Dynasty were very domineering, and the civil officials were mostly weak. It can be said that this was completely the opposite of the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, Li Jun did not take Zhang Bingyi, the civil servant who had transferred him to command the village, seriously. He said, "They are just a bunch of natives. Why would we want to deal with them? Look around, Zhang Tongzhi. What valuables do they have in their tribe? Just some animal skins and dried meat."

Zhang Bingyi felt that he couldn't make sense of Li Jun, so he said, "You're so horny that you don't even choose your partner? Don't you even take a look at what those natives look like? How could you possibly be willing to eat them?"

This made Li Jun blush slightly, and he immediately said, "As long as she's a woman, it's fine. We've all been holding it in for months, who cares about her appearance?"

Zhang Bingyi calmed down and said, "Rape and looting are forbidden in the military. Although this place is outside the Ming Dynasty, you are still Ming soldiers. Most importantly, these natives are indeed useful to the court."

"You all came here to make contributions. If you make a mistake due to a momentary desire, you will not only be punished, but your contributions will also be discounted. Is it worth it?"

These words calmed Li Jun and other soldiers down a bit.

Li Jun then said, "Zhang Tongzhi, we have to stay here. We can't just hold it in forever, right?"

Zhang Bingyi said, "Your family will come over by ship next year. In addition, the court also plans to purchase a batch of Japanese women from Japan as rewards for meritorious soldiers."

"Care carefully, is it better to sleep with an ugly native for the sake of momentary pleasure, or to accumulate merit and get a young and beautiful Japanese woman as a concubine?"

Beautiful Japanese woman?

When Li Jun and others heard this, their eyes lit up and they stopped talking about attacking the native tribe.

After waiting for a while, they saw twenty or thirty young and strong natives returning to the valley with their prey. Zhang Bingyi immediately signaled Li Jun to take people to stop the group of natives.

The group of natives were frightened when they saw the Ming soldiers suddenly appear.

When they wanted to take action, they found that the Ming soldiers outnumbered them several times. So they gathered together at the leader's command and took a defensive stance.

Zhe Jie, the leader of the Big Bear tribe, looked at the Ming soldiers wearing armor, holding swords, shields and bird guns with confusion.

Although he was afraid, he was even more afraid that these strangers who looked very powerful would take action directly, so he bravely stood up and started talking incoherently.

Zhang Bingyi and others couldn't understand at all.

Fortunately, Zhang Bingyi had experienced this kind of thing on Ezo Island and Kuwu Island, so he stepped forward and spoke while making gestures.

"I want to exchange salt for your prey."

After demonstrating, Zhang Bingyi took out a small cloth bag of salt and threw it over.

This small cloth bag is only half the size of a palm, and it is filled with coarse salt, weighing only one or two taels.

Since the Ming Dynasty began using the salt field salt drying method last year, the price of salt has begun to fall. This amount of crude salt is now only worth a few cents in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhe Jie didn't understand what Zhang Bingyi said, but he roughly understood the meaning of the exchange.

He picked up the small cloth bag, saw the salt inside, tasted it, and was immediately overjoyed. He danced with the tribesmen behind him.

Then dozens of young and strong natives danced with joy.

Zhang Bingyi, Li Jun and others found it funny to see the natives so happy over a little salt, but they were also inexplicably proud - the natives were really ignorant. If they saw other good things from our Ming Dynasty, wouldn't they kneel down and worship them as if they were sacred objects?

Capricorn and other natives were happy for a while, and seemed to be afraid that Zhang Bingyi would not be willing to trade, so they directly ordered the tribesmen to put all the prey they had hunted in the open space in the middle.

Zhang Bingyi signaled Li Jun and others to take away the prey, and then went to continue communicating with Capricorn through gestures.

After gesturing for a while, Capricorn finally understood part of what Zhang Bingyi meant.

He turned around and smiled at the tribesmen behind him, saying, "So they're a large tribe from overseas, now living south of us. Besides making salt, they also have many other good things. I hope they can trade with us often in the future."

The Ice and Fire Island is rich in wild animal resources and hunting is not difficult, so the Big Bear Tribe has no shortage of prey, but lacks salt.

Because they don't know how to make salt.

In the past, they could only exchange a little salt from the large tribes on the island, and most of the time they relied on drinking raw blood to replenish salt.

Now, hearing that a large tribe that can produce salt has moved nearby, I am very happy.

As to whether this tribe would threaten their survival, no one had ever thought about it, because the biggest enemies of the people on the Ice and Fire Island have always been the severe cold and disease, not other tribes.

Afterwards, Zhang Bingyi took out a small bag of coarse salt and said that he wanted to go to the Big Bear tribe to exchange for some furs. Capricorn happily agreed.

But he was not foolish enough to let all the more than one hundred Ming soldiers go, and only agreed to let Zhang Bingyi take twenty people.

　First update.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)