Chapter 701: A beautiful place with glittering gold
In the next three days, the expedition team traveled upstream along the Lu River, stopping and going.
Every day near noon, Lucci would go ashore, use the electronic sextant he carried to measure the sun's altitude, and obtain the local latitude by consulting a book called "Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris" published by the British. As for the local latitude,
There is no need to calculate the longitude, just use the longitude of later Sacramento, which is 121 degrees, 29 minutes and 35.99 seconds west longitude.
In addition, at each fork of the river, Rucci also asked people to mark prominent locations on the shore; for example, tying a red cloth strip high on a tree trunk in the correct direction, or using white paint to draw a five-pointed star on a rock.
Stars and big arrows.
On the morning of the fourth day, when the fleet passed a large "U"-shaped river bend that opened to the west, and continued to walk more than ten kilometers north, only oak trees and cottonwoods with twisted trunks could be seen everywhere on the river bank.
, the huge yellow canopy blocks out the sun. Wild grapevines hang on both sides of the blue water, birds are chirping in the trees, and salmon more than a foot long swim in the depths of the clear river. Such a beautiful scenery
, immersing everyone in the expedition team.
For some reason, Lu Qi felt that this place should not be far from the target, so he decided to go ashore to measure. Soon, the data was obtained, and then compared with the astronomical calendar, it was 38 degrees, 32 minutes and 12.76 seconds north latitude. He knew that every difference in latitude
One minute is 1.849 kilometers, and later Sacramento was located at 38 degrees, 34 minutes and 53.99 seconds north latitude, so you only need to go four kilometers further north to plant a flag.
When the fleet continued to sail north for more than half an hour, Lu Qi felt that the distance was almost there, so he ordered each ship to dock on the east bank. However, just as everyone boarded the river bank and was preparing to carry tents and other supplies from the ship, the accompanying man
The Indian named Bai Bai suddenly raised his hand to warn; Bai Bai had warned him like this several times when he encountered wild beasts while camping.
"Everyone on alert!" Following the order from the platoon leader, the members of the expedition team hurriedly put down the things in their hands, lowered themselves, and raised the lever rifles in their hands.
The oak branches rustled in the wind, and the river behind him flowed. Time seemed to pass extremely long. Rucci was squatting in the grass, holding a lever rifle, breathing heavily, with small eyes.
The trickle flows around.
Just when he was feeling anxious, he saw hundreds of Indians with faces, hands and feet painted like melons popping out of the bushes and trees more than ten meters away. Each of them had disheveled hair and black hair.
They have yellow and red feathers, their skin looks dark, they are holding a bow and arrow or a wooden spear and a round shield, they are shouting and their eyes are fierce.
At this moment, he heard someone on the opposite side say something loudly. Lu Qi then turned to look at Bai Bai, the Miwok lying next to him. He pursed his lips and gestured, which means it's your turn...
...
It was not until more than a year later, when Rucci was finally able to communicate with the Indians in Mandarin, that he realized that the fierce native Indians he encountered were actually Miwok people. It was just that they were mountainous people.
Miwok ethnic group, and those in Lushui belong to the plains Miwok ethnic group.
Of course, Rucci was also deeply impressed by the "delicious food" he had when he was a guest in an aboriginal village that day. The other party not only brought out roasted acorns, but also brought him a bowl of paste-like food with an indescribable weird taste.
Lu Qi used a wooden spoon to pull it out, and found that there was something similar to a bulb, green grass seeds, unknown mushrooms, and even two large grasshoppers.
Luqi had eaten roasted grasshoppers before, but cooking grasshoppers was too difficult... The problem was that he couldn't resist Bai Bai's encouraging words with a smile, and the opponent's chief's look that he couldn't refuse. Luqi gritted his teeth and felt in his heart
He said he had fought for gold! Then he raised his neck and drank it. The grasshopper didn't even dare to chew and swallowed it directly. So early the next morning, Lu Qi and a dozen of his men suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. It was a loss.
The expedition team brought along medicines such as norfloxacin and berberine to treat diarrhea, and he and his thirty soldiers narrowly escaped death.
According to Bai Bai later, grasshoppers are a rare delicacy for the Miwok people in the plains.
Lu Qi asked, "Then why don't you eat?"
Bai Bai smiled and said, we are mountain Miwok and live by the sea, so we like to eat mussels and abalone most, not grasshoppers.
Lu Qi laughed and scolded, Bai Bai, you are a big liar!
Well, since Lucci and his expedition team came here before the Spaniards in this time and space, he did his best to name the plain where the landing place is "Lushui Plain".
The Lushui Plain is actually an impact plain formed by the intersection of two rivers. The north-south direction is naturally the Lushui River, while the east-west direction is a river called "Kum Mayo"; it took many years for Lu Qi to figure out what that meant.
, this is the name of the Nissenan people, meaning "round house river"; it is derived from the residential style of the Nissenan people. In addition to the plain Miwok people, this area is also inhabited by the Nissenan people, the Maduan and the Wintu people.
The population reaches tens of thousands.
Afterwards, Ruch had a difficult negotiation with the local Miwok chief. In the end, he used thirty scissors, thirty knives, ten hammers and two golden insulation blankets, plus annual supplies to the village.
In exchange for two hundred bags of flour, a piece of land covering an area of 70 square kilometers near the river was obtained.
In fact, the chief didn't know what flour was at all. He had never even seen wheat. This condition was proposed by Lu Qi himself, mainly because he felt a little guilty about taking too much advantage. He used the flour he carried on the boat and mixed it with the river water.
, made a slate pancake for the chief, and the chief and several elders each shared a piece, eating it with relish, and then they were full of yearning for this food called "wheat".
Half a year later, when thousands of Chinese miners arrived here, a small town called "Lushui City" also sprung up. However, among the miners from Borneo, it was simply called "Erbu", Kinmen.
It is a "big port". Since there are very few Chinese women here, many single miners intermarry with local Indian women, giving birth to a large group of mixed-race but not mixed-race offspring.
As for the local Miwok people, they have also been gradually influenced by Chinese culture. From their language, food, clothing, and living, to the end, like the Chinese, they will burn incense and kowtow to their ancestors’ tablets during every year and festival. However, in addition to their parents and ancestors, there are many more people on their ancestor’s tablets.
A wolf god and an eagle god.
However, everything has two sides. As more and more Chinese came across the sea, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the Indian villages in the Lushui River Basin three years later. Although the medical staff in Beihai Town
Despite all efforts to rescue the Indians, the number of Indians on the Lushui Plain was reduced by more than one-third. Since then, the local Indians have reluctantly accepted cowpox and other vaccines, and the population has slowly increased again.
Luqi and the others stayed in the future Lushui Town for three days. By using drones to repeatedly compare the surrounding terrain, rivers and later data, he finally confirmed that the "Kum Mayo" in the local population was the "American River" in another time and space.
; And the place where gold is produced is somewhere on the south fork of this river.
The expedition set off again, and this time there were two more plains Miwok people in the team. Such a good business partner, the local chief did not want to give up easily, so he asked his son Livanu and another young man named Wuye to
Be a guide; the former’s name means “roaring bear” and the latter “dancing turkey”.
Livanu was the guy who led a group of people to ambush the expedition team a few days ago. When he saw Lucci for the first time, he was very curious about the cowhide belt tied around his waist. After Lucci figured it out,
So he took off his armed belt and gave it to him, including a sharp dagger. The young chief was so happy that he made a big hanging hanging made of shells, glass beads, wood and feathers.
The necklace was given to the other party.
To be honest, the expedition's journey seemed to go smoothly, mainly because Bai Bai and another guy named Su Ke were accompanying them to help explain to the aborigines, otherwise they would definitely be in trouble.
In the traditional impression of later generations, the Indians, as the indigenous people of North America, were powerless to fight back against the European colonists. However, that was all in the industrialization era in the second half of the 19th century. Now they occupy the western part of North America.
The Spaniards were actually very afraid of these native peoples; they could only seize land through deception rather than war.
Not to mention anything else, during the Revolutionary War more than ten years ago, the Continental Army was defeated by the Iroquois tribe allied with the British army. And in that "Battle of Wyoming", which was later known as the Massacre, even more
More than 300 white people were scalped, and countless people abandoned their homes and fled for their lives.
When the second Anglo-American War breaks out more than ten years later, the Iroquois Confederacy will usher in its highlight moment. They will join hands with the British army to attack Washington and burn the Presidential Palace to the ground. This will give birth to a landmark - the White House.
Because it was the dry season, the four assault boats had to move slowly along the long and winding "Round House River". When the group entered the mountainous area two days later, the water level in some sections of the river was too shallow, and everyone even screamed.
Carrying the rubber boat and walking on the water that only touches the knees, it is difficult to describe the hardships along the way.
For example, when we camped in the mountains on the first day, the aroma of cooking food attracted bears, wolves, and wild boars. Although the soldiers on guard shot and scared away the animals, they also attracted the young chief and another man.
My companion was so frightened that he almost ran away without a trace.
Later, when they passed by a Nissenan village as a guest, the chief of the other side was quite surprised when he heard Lu Qi always mention "Cullumah", because this name comes from the Nissenan language "Cullumah", which means "beautiful".
". After confirming that the expedition was going to Coloma, the chief, who received the gift, decided to take them there himself.
Since it was already upstream of the South Fork of the Round House River, it was impossible for an assault boat to pass through, so everyone had to leave the boat in the village and go on foot with backpacks.
After walking for two days, the group came to a deep and undulating valley before the sun set. It was surrounded by dense forests, gurgling streams, and the thick redwoods and yellowbark pine trees that required at least four or five people to embrace. After a hasty meal, they were already tired.
Lu Qi, whose bones were about to fall apart, got into the tent and fell asleep. He was not awakened until the next morning by the chirping of birds outside.
When Lu Qi came out of the tent, except for the sentry on duty, several people in the tent were still sleeping. Under the watch of the sentry, he walked to the stream, scooped up cold water with his hands, rinsed his mouth, and washed again
His face suddenly felt energetic. It was only then that he began to look at the scenery around the campsite. After looking around for a while, the man strolled along the left bank of the stream with his hands behind his back. After walking more than ten meters, suddenly,
He saw something sparkling in the stream.
At first he thought it was an opal, which is a black and transparent stone that he often saw after entering the mountain. Lu Qi instinctively decided to ignore the thing and continued walking forward, but after taking a few steps, he unconsciously
I turned around and went back, squatted down and took a closer look. I found that the thing didn't look like an opal, but a few sparkling fragments. I then leaned over and fished out one of them.
This fragment was about half the size of Lu Qi's palm, and only one corner was glowing. When he wiped away the black mud and algae covering the rest of the fragment with his hand, the golden light of the entire fragment was immediately revealed. Lu Qi's
My head was buzzing, and my hands were even trembling with excitement.
How the hell is this an opal? It’s clearly a thin gold flake like a scale!
Lu Qi didn't bother to go back and wake up the sleeping expedition team members. He leaned over and fished out a few more fragments from the stream, and found that they were all the same golden scales. The guy was immediately excited, and then he followed the stream
After walking and searching all the way, they actually walked more than a mile. When Bai Bai and several team members shouted anxiously to find him, they already had more than 30 pieces of various sizes in their jacket pockets.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! After returning to the campsite, Lu Qi did not explain anything, he plunged into the tent, opened his backpack, and took out the stainless steel cup he used to drink water from.
, took out a golden flake from his pocket and put it in; then, he took out a tightly sealed small brown glass bottle and a plastic dropper from another bag. When the bottle cap was opened, there was a pungent smell.
The smell jumped out.
He held his breath, used a plastic dropper to take a few drops of colorless solution from the bottle, carefully dropped it on the gold pieces in the cup, then tightened the cap of the bottle, and then turned his attention to the stainless steel cup.
After a while, there was no reaction at the drop of acid on the golden flakes. Only then did Lu Qi confirm that what he found was gold, and the purity was not low!
Oh my God! I found it!
Lu Qi grinned silently and giggled silently. All he was thinking about at the moment was that he had spent so much effort to help Zhao Xin find gold, what should he ask for from him?
At this time, everyone in the expedition team was already awake. They gathered in small groups and whispered, saying, "What's going on with Mr. Lu?" After a while, Lu Qi finally came out. He waved to the platoon leader.
The commander gave a few instructions in a low voice. The more he listened, the brighter his eyes became, and a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.
After everyone had a few mouthfuls of dry food along with hot tea, they all took out hammers, shovels and other tools from their bags. In groups of five, they started to get busy along the surrounding creek.
A shovel came here, two hammers there, and the Indians were confused. They found Rucci and asked with gestures. Rucci thought for a while and felt that this matter could not be hidden at all, so he took it out of his pocket.
A piece of gold was shown to several Indians.
"kic\u0027aw!" Chief Nisennan and Liwanu both shouted in surprise. Only then did they understand why these outsiders came 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 fragments as big as fingernails or gold as big as grains of rice. Especially in a place on the southern mountain.
In the dry canyon, an expedition team member dug out a solid gold nugget weighing one tael using only the dagger he carried.