Daming Military Empire

Chapter 592 Large Open Pit Mine

A large-scale open-pit coal mine was discovered in the area under the jurisdiction of the 20th household in Xibo. Within five days of spreading the news, Ma Kai, the commander of the No. [-] First Guard, personally accompanied Lu Nanfeng, a member of the Tuntian Cleaning Department of the Ministry of Industry, to the area under the jurisdiction of Luozongshan. .

There are rewards for discovering mineral deposits. This is a rule set by Zhu Cijiong himself. However, the rewards are not uniform. The mineral deposits vary in size. If the uniform reward is a few hundred taels or 1000 taels, then those who find large or super-large mineral deposits will suffer a lot. If a unified reward of several thousand taels or tens of thousands of taels is given, then the imperial court will suffer a great loss if it discovers a small mineral deposit.

Therefore, he also added an additional rule, which is to reward according to the size of the mine.

Discover small mineral deposits, reward 1000 taels;

Discover medium-sized mineral deposits, reward 5000 taels;

Discover large mineral deposits, reward 1 taels;

2 taels will be rewarded for discovering super-large mineral deposits.

Of course, the size of this deposit is not determined by the person who discovered it, but by officials from the Ministry of Industry leading relevant professionals to the site for investigation.

According to Luo Zongshan's description, the coal mine in his jurisdiction is definitely a super-large open-pit coal mine, but what he says doesn't matter, and the officials of the Ministry of Industry have the final say.

Lu Nanfeng is the official of the Ministry of Industry who is responsible for identifying the size of the coal mine. The team he leads are professionals in coal exploration and mining. The reason why he came so quickly is because he has already arrived in Siberia. The so-called heavy reward There must be brave men under them. Zhu Cijiong and Bi Maokang have long realized that with the temptation of huge prizes, these guards will definitely try their best to find mines, so they sent officials in charge of appraisal and related professionals to Siberia early on. up.

Sure enough, less than a month after the start of the Tunwei relocation, good news came in one after another. Lu Nanfeng had just identified a medium-sized open-pit coal mine at the nearby Qianhu Office, and there was news that he found a super-large open-pit coal mine, so , he brought people over in a hurry.

Luo Zongshan naturally welcomed their arrival, and he also knew that the Ministry of Industry would only give money after reading it. As for how much money he would give after reading it, he didn't have much idea. He was from a small place and was used to being poor. To him, it was a big fortune, 1000 taels was already a huge amount of wealth, as for 5000 taels, 1 taels, he couldn't even think about it, how much would that be!

These professionals from the Ministry of Industry are naturally familiar with prospecting for the size of coal mines. You must know that more than half of the coal mines being mined in Daming are explored by them, but there are only a few of them in total. Come on, it is impossible to run all the territory of Daming in a lifetime, let alone explore it in detail. The professionals of other various mineral deposits are similar. With just a few people, it is impossible to explore all the territory of Daming.

However, the demand for minerals in Daming is getting bigger and bigger. The demand for coal mines, iron mines, and copper mines is increasing sharply, especially for coal mines. With the increasingly widespread use of steam engines, the amount of coal used has doubled in the past There are many places where you can’t buy coal, and even many places use firewood to burn steam. I don’t know how much waste it has caused.

That's why Zhu Cijiong came up with this reward mechanism. If there is no reward for you to ask someone to find it, they will not pay attention at all. Now it is different, not only rewards, but also heavy rewards, plus the subsequent contracting mechanism, These garrison guards have gone crazy looking for them!
Sure enough, this trick is still very effective. Less than half a month after the first batch of guards moved to Siberia, news of finding mineral deposits came from all over the country. Four or five coal mines were found, but Luo Zongshan reported the scale here. The biggest one, that's why Lu Nanfeng gave priority to bringing people over to investigate.

If we say that the survey technology in this era is still relatively backward, it is nothing more than looking with the eyes and digging with hands. The coal mine that Yiwei discovered had such a large area that it took at least ten days to survey it.

Therefore, Luo Zongshan led people to accompany Lu Nanfeng and others to start the process of deep digging and sampling. Almost every place had to be dug several feet deep to confirm whether there was a coal seam below.

In fact, a super open-pit coal mine with a radius of thousands of miles is unlikely to exist. Most of what Luo Zongshan and the others dug were drifted from the main mine, floating on the surface, a shallow layer of coal, and in many places after digging deep Ordinary soil and rocks have no coal seams at all.

However, being able to scatter the coal everywhere proved that the main mine should be quite large. Based on experience, Lu Nanfeng and the others began to slowly determine the location of the main mine. The search took a few days.

During this period of time, they can be regarded as lucky, because the group of hunters led by Lao Xie has almost trained, and has slowly started hunting. I don’t know how many grouse, rabbits, and minks come back in a day, one thousand and one thousand Husuo gradually had a stable income, and even had money to buy some wine to drink.

Moreover, most of these things are valuable for fur, so meat has naturally become a good delicacy for entertaining guests.

Even, in order to welcome their arrival, Luo Zongshan specially asked Lao Xie to bring ten flintlock guns to kill a black bear near their gathering place.

In fact, according to the book, this season is not the best season for hunting bears. The most valuable bear is the pair of bear paws, and the best time to get bear paws should be spring, because bears have the habit of hibernating. They all live by licking their paws, and the fluid and glue in their palms seep into their palms, which is one of the reasons why bear paws are rich in nutrition.

For the bears hunted this autumn, the bear paws are not the best, and they are not easy to preserve. It is basically impossible to take them out and sell them, so they can only eat them by themselves.

However, Luo Zongshan had no choice but to order people to kill the bear, because its lair was too close to the gathering place. If one day it was hungry and crazy and rushed into the gathering place, it would be a big trouble, because most of the time the strong men would go out After going to work, there are old and young women and children in the gathering place, and they can't handle a bear at all.

Even though this bear paw is a famous delicacy, not many people have eaten it, even the commander Ma Kai has never eaten it. Luo Zongshan also sent someone to ask Li the shopkeeper of Daming Royal Xinglong Company to inquire about it before he knew how to make it. .

The easiest way to make bear paws is to braise them in soy sauce, and they must be steamed for a quarter of an hour before being cooked with chicken, lean meat and bone soup, and then served with ginger and scallion cooking wine to remove the fishy smell. The taste can only be tasted after eating. Only people who know it will not go into details here.

In short, although Ma Kai went back the next day, the treatment Lu Nanfeng and his party enjoy here is quite high, but they did not cheat for personal gain. Finally, it was discovered that the main mine of this open-pit coal mine is about ten miles in radius, which can only be regarded as A large mine is not a super large mine.

For this result, Luo Zongshan is already very satisfied. The reward of 1 taels is a huge fortune for the entire [-] households. Moreover, they can also participate in the mining of coal mines, which is a long-term stable project. income.

As for how to mine coal mines, this chapter is over, and we will see the breakdown in the next chapter.

(End of this chapter)