Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 703 The Glittering and Beautiful Land

In the next three days, the expedition team went upstream along the Lushui River, stopping and going.

Every day near noon, Lu Qi would go ashore, use the electronic sextant he carried to measure the altitude angle of the sun, and obtain the local latitude by consulting a book published by the British "Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris".As for the longitude, don't forget it, just apply the longitude of the later Sacramento, which is 121 degrees 29 minutes 35.99 seconds west longitude.

In addition, at each fork in the river, Lu Qi also had people mark a prominent position on the bank; for example, tie a red cloth strip on the height of a tree trunk in the correct direction, or draw a pentagon with white paint on the rock. Stars and big arrows.

On the morning of the fourth day, when the fleet passed a "U"-shaped big river bay opening to the west, and continued to walk northward for more than ten kilometers, they saw oak trees and cottonwoods with twisted trunks everywhere on the river bank. , a huge yellow canopy covering the sky and the sun.Wild vines hang from the banks of the blue water, birds are chirping in the trees, and salmon a foot long swim in the depths of the clear water.Such a beautiful scenery, so that everyone in the expedition team immersed in it.

For some reason, Lu Qi felt that this place should not be far from the target, so he decided to go ashore to measure it.Soon, the data was obtained, and compared with the astronomical calendar, it was 38 degrees 32 minutes 12.76 seconds north latitude.He knew that every minute of latitude is 1.849 kilometers, and Sacramento in later generations is located at 38 degrees 34 minutes 53.99 seconds north latitude, so it only needs to go four kilometers north to plant the flag.

When the fleet continued to drive northward for more than half an hour, Lu Qi felt that the distance was almost there, so he ordered the ships to stop on the east coast.However, just as everyone boarded the river bank and was about to move tents and other supplies from the boat, the accompanying Indian named Bai Bai suddenly raised his hand to warn; Bai Bai had always reminded him of encountering wild animals when camping several times before.

"Everyone be on alert!" Following the command of the platoon leader, the members of the expedition hurriedly put down the things in their hands, lowered their bodies, and took advantage of the opportunity to raise the lever rifle in their hands.

The oak branches that were blown by the wind swished, the river flowed behind him, and the time seemed to pass extremely long.Lu Qi, who was squatting in the grass, was holding a lever rifle, breathing heavily, and his small eyes were dripping.

Just when he was feeling uneasy, he saw hundreds of Indians whose faces, hands and feet were painted like melons suddenly appeared from the bushes and behind the trees more than ten meters away. It has yellow and red feathers, and its skin looks dark. It holds a bow and arrow or a wooden spear and round shield, screams in its mouth, and has a fierce look in its eyes.

The expedition set off again, this time with two more Plains Miwoks in the team.Such a good business partner, the local chief didn't want to give up easily, so he asked his son Livanu and another young man named Wuye to be guides; the former's name means "roaring bear" and the latter means "dancing bear". turkey".

To be honest, the journey of the expedition team seems to be going smoothly this time, mainly because Bai Bai and another guy named Su Ke accompanied them to help explain to the aborigines, otherwise they would definitely fall into a big stumble.

At first he thought it was an opal, that is, a black and transparent stone, which he had seen often since he was in the mountains.Lu Qi instinctively decided to ignore the thing and continue to walk forward, but after walking a few steps, he turned back unconsciously, squatted down and took a closer look, and found that the thing was not like an opal, but a few sparkling pieces Fragments, and then leaned over to fish out one of them.

Lu Qi didn't care to go back and wake up the sleeping expedition team members, leaned over and fished out the other pieces from the stream, and found that they were all the same golden scales.The guy was immediately excited, and then he walked all the way along the stream to find it, and he actually walked out for more than a mile.By the time the anxious Bai Bai and several team members shouted to find him, there were already more than 30 fragments of various sizes in his jacket pocket.

At this moment, someone on the opposite side blabla said something loudly, and Lu Qi immediately turned his head to look at Baibai, the Miwok who was lying beside him, and pouted his mouth to signal, which means it's time for you
It wasn't until more than a year later, when Lu Qi was finally able to communicate with the Indians in Mandarin, that he realized that the fierce native Indians he met were actually Miwok people.It's just that in vain they belong to the mountain Miwok ethnic group, while those in Lushui belong to the plain Miwok ethnic group.

For example, when camping after entering the mountains on the first day, because of the aroma of the cooking food, all the bears, wolves, and wild boars were attracted.Although the sentry soldiers shot to scare the animals away, they also scared the young chief and another companion so badly that they almost ran away without a trace.

Later, when they passed by a Nisennan village as guests, the chief of the other side was quite surprised to hear that Lu Qi always mentioned "Coloma", because this name comes from the Nisennan language "Cullumah", which means "beautiful". ".When it was confirmed that the expedition team was going to Coloma, the chief who received the gift decided to take them there himself.

After walking for two days, a group of people came to an undulating deep valley before the sun set, surrounded by dense forests, gurgling streams, thick redwoods and yellow bark pines at least four or five people can hug each other.After a hasty meal, Lu Qi, who was already tired and his bones were about to fall apart, got into the tent and fell asleep. It was not until the next morning that he was awakened by the birdsong outside.

Afterwards, Lu Qi and the local Miwok chief had a difficult negotiation with talks and gestures.In the end, he used [-] scissors, [-] knives, [-] hammers and two golden thermal insulation blankets, plus the condition of providing [-] bags of flour to the village every year, and obtained a piece of land covering an area of ​​[-] square kilometers near the river.

According to what Baibai later said, grasshoppers are a rare delicacy for the people of Miwok in the plain.

In fact, the chief didn't even know what flour was, and he had never even seen wheat. This condition was raised by Lu Qi himself, mainly because he felt a little sorry for taking too much advantage.He used the flour and river water he carried on the boat to make a slate pancake for the chief. The chief shared a piece with several elders and ate with relish, and then he was full of yearning for this kind of food called "wheat".

When the second Anglo-American war breaks out more than ten years later, the Iroquois Alliance will usher in a bright moment. They will join hands with the British army to break through Washington and burn down the presidential palace, thus giving birth to a landmark - the White House.

When Lu Qi came out of the tent, except for the sentry on duty, several people in the tent were still sleeping.Under the watchful eyes of the sentinel, he walked to the edge of the stream, scooped up cold water with his hands, rinsed his mouth, and washed his face again, feeling suddenly shaken.Only then did he start to look at the surrounding scenery of the campsite.After looking around for a while, the guy walked along the left bank of the stream with his hands behind his back.After walking more than ten meters, suddenly, he saw something gleaming in the stream.

This is not an opal, it is clearly a thin gold plate like a scale!

Lu Qi grinned silently and smirked, all he was thinking at the moment was that he had spent so much effort to help Zhao Xin find gold, what should he ask him for?
At this time, everyone in the expedition team had already woken up. They gathered together in small groups and whispered, what happened to Mr. Lu?After a while, Lu Qi finally came out. He beckoned to the platoon leader and gave some instructions in a low voice. The more he listened, Lu Qi's eyes became brighter, and a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

The Lushui Plain is actually an impact plain formed by the confluence of two rivers. The north-south direction is naturally the Lushui River, while the east-west direction is a river called "Kum Mayo". It was not until many years later that Lu Qi figured out what that meant. , which is the name of the Nisennan people, meaning "round house river"; it is derived from the residential style of the Nisennan people.In addition to the Miwok people in the plain, there are also Nisennan, Maiduan and Wentu people living in this area, with a population of tens of thousands.

Since it was already upstream of the branch of the Fork of the Roundhouse River, the assault boats could not pass at all, so everyone had to leave the boat in the village and go on foot with backpacks.

After returning to the campsite, Lu Qi didn't explain anything, and plunged into the tent, opened his backpack, took out the stainless steel cup he used for drinking water, took out a piece of gold flake from his pocket, and put it in; From another bag, I took out a tightly sealed small brown glass bottle and a plastic dropper.When the bottle cap was opened, a pungent smell burst out.

This fragment was about half the size of Lu Qi's palm, and only one corner was glowing. When he wiped off the black mud and algae covering the rest with his hands, the golden light of the entire fragment was immediately revealed.Lu Qi's head buzzed, and even his excited hands trembled a little.

However, there are two sides to everything.As more and more Chinese came across the sea, a smallpox epidemic broke out in various Indian villages in the Lushui River Basin three years later.Despite the full rescue efforts of the medical staff in Beihai Town, the number of Indians on the Lushui Plain has decreased by more than one-third.Since then, the local Indians have reluctantly accepted vaccinia and other vaccines, and the population has slowly risen again.

Well, since Lu Qi and his expedition team came here before the Spaniards in this time and space, he did his part to name the plain where the landed place is "Lu Shui Plain".

Of course, Lu Qi was also deeply impressed by the "food" he ate as a guest in the aboriginal village that day.The other party not only took out roasted acorns, but also brought him a bowl of paste-like food that couldn't tell the weird taste.Lu Qi pulled it with a wooden spoon and found that there were some kind of bulbs, green grass seeds, unknown mushrooms, and even two large grasshoppers.

Half a year later, when thousands of Chinese miners arrived here, a small town named "Lushui City" also sprang up.However, in the mouths of those miners from Borneo, this place is referred to as "Erbu" for short, and Kinmen is "Dabu".Because there are very few Chinese women here, many single miners intermarried with local Indian women and gave birth to a large group of offspring who seemed to be mixed.

After a while, there was no reaction from the dripping acid on the golden flake.Only then did Lu Qi confirm that what he found was gold, and the purity was not low!
God!But let me find it!

Lu Qi asked, why don't you eat it?
Bai Bai said with a smile, we are Miwok in the mountains and live by the sea, so we like to eat mussels and abalone the most, and we don't like grasshoppers.

Because it was the dry season, the four assault boats had to move slowly along the winding and narrow "Round House River".Two days later, when the group entered the mountainous area, the water level in some sections of the river was too shallow, and everyone had to carry the rubber boats, stepping on the water that only touched their knees, and the hardships along the way were beyond words.

In the traditional impression of later generations, the Indians, as natives of North America, were helpless in the face of European colonists, but that was all in the second half of the [-]th century in the era of industrialization. The Spaniards were actually very afraid of these natives; they could only conquer land through deception rather than war.

Lu Qi and the others stayed in the future Lushui Town for three days. By using drones to compare the surrounding terrain and rivers with the data of later generations, he finally confirmed that the "Kum Mayo" in the local population is the "American River" in another time and space. ; and the place where the gold is produced is somewhere on the tributary of this southern fork.

Not to mention anything else, during the War of Independence more than ten years ago, the Continental Army was defeated by the Iroquois tribe allied with the British Army.And in the "Battle of Wyoming", which was called the massacre by later generations, more than 300 white people were scalped, and countless people abandoned their homes and fled for their lives.

Lu Qi had eaten roasted grasshoppers before, but the difficulty of cooking grasshoppers was too high. The problem was that he couldn't stand the instigation of laughing in vain, and the irresistible gaze of the other chief. Lu Qi gritted his teeth and said that he would fight for gold!Then he raised his neck and drank it. The grasshopper didn't even dare to chew it, so he swallowed it directly.So early the next morning, Lu Qi and a dozen of his subordinates vomited and diarrhea.Thanks to the expedition team bringing diarrhea medicines such as norfloxacin and berberine, he and his thirty soldiers escaped by luck.

As for the local Miwok people, they are also gradually influenced by Chinese culture, from language and diet to clothing and living, and in the end, just like the Chinese, they will burn incense and kowtow to their ancestors during festivals and festivals.It's just that in addition to their parents and grandparents, there is also a wolf god and an eagle god in their ancestral tablets.

Lu Qi laughed and scolded, you are a big liar for nothing!

He held his breath, took a few drops of the colorless solution from the bottle with a plastic dropper, and carefully dropped it on the gold piece in the cup, then tightened the bottle cap, and then turned his attention to the stainless steel cup.

Livanu was the guy who led a group of people to ambush the expedition team a few days ago. When he first saw Lu Qi, he was very curious about the cowhide belt around his waist.After Lu Qi figured it out, he took off his armed belt and gave it to him, including a sharp dagger.The young chief was very happy, so he gave the other party a large necklace that he strung together with shells, glass beads, wood and feathers.

After everyone hastily ate a few mouthfuls of dry food with hot tea, they took out tools such as hammers and shovels from their bags. A group of five began to get busy along the surrounding stream.

One shovel here, two hammers there, it was in vain to wait for the Indians to be confused.They found Lu Qi and asked with gestures. Lu Qi thought about it and felt that it was impossible to hide this matter, so he took out a piece of gold from his pocket and showed it to several Indians.

"Kic'aw!" The Nisennan chief and Livanu both exclaimed in surprise, and only then did they understand why these outsiders came here after running so far.

After that, everyone in the expedition team was busy for a whole day. They searched every creek and valley within a two-kilometer radius, and found many pieces of fingernail-sized pieces or rice-sized gold.Especially in a dry canyon on the south mountain, an expedition member dug out a solid gold nugget weighing one tael with only the dagger he carried.

(End of this chapter)