Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 155 Linhai Fort (Part )
"If you really can't hold it back, just laugh out loud!"

Standing on the high watchtower, Qi Yongze looked around at the surrounding situation. Apart from endless forests and swamps, there was no other scenery worth seeing. After looking for a long time, he became very bored.

Turning around, he found Wei Zhonglong still glancing at him from time to time, a constipated expression on his face, his shoulders shrugging, clearly trying to suppress a laugh. He felt a little annoyed, and then said unhappily, "Anyway, you've been laughing about this all day. I want to see when this novelty wears off!"

"Hahaha..." Wei Zhonglong suddenly burst into laughter, causing the immigrants below to look up at him frequently.

"Be careful! Don't let it fall. If you fall, there's no one to heal you!"

"Ozawa, you said that the leader of the Ainu tribe wants to recruit you as his consort. What a wonderful thing! Why don't you want to?"

"Get lost!" Qi Yongze cursed with a smile. "A damn tribe of less than sixty people, how can you call that a prince consort? If you want to be a prince consort, I'll personally act as a matchmaker for you. I'll even arrange to send you a few bolts of cloth that we have in stock in the village as a betrothal gift!"

"But the tribal leader has taken a liking to you!" Wei Zhonglong said with a smile, "I think it's a good idea for you to marry into this tribe. It can perfectly demonstrate our principle of Han and Fan being one family. When the tribal leader dies, you can inherit the entire tribe as his consort. Tsk tsk... just think about it, everyone in the tribe will have to listen to you, and you can get a taste of being a king!"

"The king's addiction?" Qi Yongze laughed dumbly. "You only have about sixty people under your command? Forget it, how about you do it?"

"Hehe... I'm not so lucky to be the king of this state." Wei Zhonglong waved his hand, then looked inquiringly, "Hey, tell me, what does that little Ainu princess look like? Are you so unattractive that you're willing to break off with them and reject this marriage?"

"Alas..." Qi Yongze sighed heavily, shook his head and said, "You said that the Ainu people looked quite similar in later generations, with somewhat European features. Although not good-looking, they were not ugly either, right? But now you can see that these men are covered in hair, with beards that almost cover their entire faces. They look like bears. I guess they are similar to the wild Jurchens at this time."

"And their women, like those indigenous women on the South Pacific islands, love to get all sorts of fancy tattoos on their bodies. The problem is, tattoos are on the body, so if you wear more clothes, they won't be seen. But they're tattooing weird things on their faces, too, especially a man's mustache on their mouths. It's really unacceptable."

The Ainu people are a mixture of the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races. They have darker skin, facial features that are typical of the Caucasoid race, a stout body, and abundant body hair.

Men generally grow long beards, and women even imitate this style deliberately, believing that growing a beard is a sign of beauty.

Therefore, in addition to carefully decorated hands, foreheads and arms, Ainu women also have various symbolic totems tattooed on them. The most distinctive feature is the blue lines tattooed on the edge of their mouths, like a circle of men's beard.

They believe that women with lip wrinkles can better speak for their husbands in the spirit world after death.

There is also a saying that ghosts in the underworld are afraid of women with beards, so if you get lip tattoos around your mouth, you will not be harmed by ghosts after death.

"Tell me, even if a woman is pretty, what does it look like with a 'beard' around her mouth? It makes people have no desire to get close to her at all. ... Suddenly, I thought I had married a man!"

"Hahaha..." Wei Zhonglong burst into laughter again, bending over, pointing at him, tears on the verge of flowing, "...If you really marry one and bring her back home, I'm sure everyone on Qiming Island will come to see her in wonder. Oh, and don't mention it, that 'beard' around the mouth of an Ainu woman makes her look like a man in a woman's body!"

"Of course not!" Qi Yongze agreed. "Not to mention me, I'm afraid even the other 33 men in our village (two of them unfortunately died of illness) would hardly look down on these Ainu women, no matter how hungry and thirsty they were. So, if we want to marry a wife, we have to rely on getting one from the Ming Dynasty. Even if the Ming Dynasty is too far away and it's difficult to recruit, we can still get some Japanese or Koreans."

"Hey, the immigration fleet should be here by now, right?" Wei Zhonglong suppressed his smile and subconsciously looked towards the seashore.

"They should be coming soon." Qi Yongze also showed an expectant expression. "When they come this time, they must leave at least a hundred people for us. That way, we can gain an overwhelming advantage over the Ainu tribe next to us. Otherwise, who knows if they will come to our Linhai Fort and force us to recruit a prince consort!"

"Haha..." Wei Zhonglong patted his shoulder and said with a smile, "If the Ainu people break into our Linhai Fort before the immigrant fleet arrives, you can sacrifice yourself and reluctantly marry that bearded Ainu princess to prevent us from suffering any unnecessary harm." "They won't really dare to attack, will they?" Qi Yongze said worriedly, "If a fight breaks out, we will certainly not be afraid of them with our superior equipment, but the vegetables, potatoes, and soybeans planted outside the village will be in trouble. They are about to be harvested, and we can't destroy our food supply."

After more than a year of hard work, and with the help of the Ainu tribe, Linhaibao reclaimed a total of more than 150 acres of land. In addition to planting various vegetables, they also planted a large amount of potatoes, soybeans, sweet potatoes and other grains.

In addition, at the beginning of this spring, we also experimentally planted more than 20 acres of wheat, but the harvest was very pitiful. It is estimated that the total yield was less than 700 kilograms, which is slightly better than nothing.

In fact, the place where Linhai Fort is located is not a good land. Except for some fields that can be reclaimed on the flat plains on both sides of the river valley, the rest of the place is covered with forests and swamps. If you want to achieve great agricultural development, you have to put in a lot of effort.

However, the nearby waters are the renowned Hokkaido fishing grounds. During the annual winter fishing season (December to February) and spring fishing season (March to May), the confluence of cold and warm currents brings rich nutrients, promoting the flourishing of plankton, which in turn provides abundant bait for fish, attracting a large number of fish to gather here.

During the fishing season, many fish such as salmon, haddock, herring, sardines, saury and so on migrate densely in this sea area, and you can get a good harvest with just one cast of the net.

In addition, in the woods surrounding Linhai Fort, there are groups of sika deer, brown bears that can be seen everywhere, and northern foxes that appear from time to time. The animal resources are also extremely rich.

This means that Linhai Fort's food consumption is not very large. So far, only half of the nearly ten tons of rice left to them after the fleet left last year has been consumed.

However, for the long term, Wei Zhonglong and Qi Yongze organized people to open up more than 100 acres of farmland and planted a lot of grain crops to supplement the food reserves of Linhai Fort.

Although the time travelers positioned this stronghold as a midway supply point that could provide the immigrant fleet with a large amount of fresh food and fresh water, there was no rigid requirement for them to achieve self-sufficiency in the short term, nor were there any major development goals required.

However, the two of them were unwilling to remain silent, and even more unwilling to be content with the status quo.

They wanted to develop Linhai Fort into a forward base close to the mainland, from which they could control the entire Hokkaido, Japan, Korea, and Liaodong in the future, and eventually become an important support point for the trans-Pacific strategy.

You should know that in later generations, Hokkaido became Japan's largest granary, occupying a quarter of its domestic arable land, with a food self-sufficiency rate of over 200%. The output of wheat, rice, potatoes, beef and dairy products ranked first in Japan.

Needless to say, the island is also rich in coal and iron ore resources. With a little development and utilization, it can acquire a certain industrial base capacity.

More importantly, Hokkaido can be regarded as an "unowned" land at present.

Except for the Fukuyama Castle built by the Matsumae clan in the southwest coastal area to declare its rule over the nearby Ezo, most of Hokkaido was a wilderness with Ainu tribes of all sizes living a primitive life of gathering and hunting.

Moreover, the Matsumae clan did not receive strong support from the Tokugawa shogunate in its development of Ezo. It was only granted a "black seal" and monopolized the fur trade with the Ainu people, and its development efforts were quite limited.

If they acted quickly, they would be able to occupy several key points in Hokkaido and build a large number of strong fortresses before the Japanese shogunate and the Matsumae clan could react, thus quickly gaining a foothold on the island.

"So, if the immigrant fleet only leaves us with a hundred people after it arrives, I'm afraid it will be far from enough for us."

(Ainu woman)

(End of this chapter)