Chapter 163 5. Dredging Rivers and Clearing Swamps

Did Xiao Pingtai come to the seaside for nothing?

Of course not!

Of course there is a purpose!

Of course there is a reason!

It took a lot of effort to grow from a 19-year-old teenager to a 24-year-old bald "middle-aged man. After so many years of loyalty and bravery, he was entrusted with an important task. He must make some convincing achievements. The country of Yuanjiang is blessed with a unique geographical location surrounded by mountains and the sea. There is a future for development. As long as you are willing to work hard, you will definitely get more rewards.

Develop industry and commerce, and seek the root of agriculture.

Come from the land, go to the land!

The coastal beaches of Yuanzhou Beach are all salt fields that are continuously eroded by the Pacific Ocean and cannot be cultivated. In addition, some are used as salt fields for frying and boiling salt. Besides. Since it is impossible to grow any crops (it seems that there is a kind of crispy radish in Tianjin, my country that can only be grown in this kind of saltwater field, the writer has only heard of it, and does not know whether it is true.), large areas of land have been abandoned. Some places are bare, and some places are covered with sparse weeds. No matter how you look at it, it is a muddy beach that cannot be used and can only be abandoned.

Secondly, the various marine shellfish that are abundant in Enshu Beach. Even in later Japan, Shizuoka Prefecture, which belongs to Enshu Province, is a famous fishing base. Shimizu Port in Shizuoka Prefecture, which is the background of the anime Chibi Maruko-chan, is still one of the seven major seaports in Japan. In Ejiri Port alone, tons of shellfish are caught every day, Ordinary shellfish reproduce quickly, and the current fishing methods and offshore boats are not very advanced. It can be said that shellfish resources seem to be inexhaustible.

In the past half month, Xiao Pingtai has traveled all over the Ejiri area with a pair of iron feet. He has witnessed the poor, hungry and cold people who have no food or clothing due to the continuous flooding of the Tenryu River, the fishermen who have no land to farm and are forced to go to sea due to the Pacific Ocean tide, and the The military conscripts who bankrupted their families and committed suicide.

The lives of the people in the territory are already very difficult, but there has not been an official who is good at governing the people to come to govern. The samurai who have no ability to govern can only watch the Ejiri becoming increasingly poor under natural disasters and man-made disasters. When the critical point is reached, the people in the territory will begin to flee, and the offspring they give birth to will drown. In the end, the country will be poor and the people will be poor, and all industries will wither.

The most typical example is the Uesugi Yonezawa Domain in the Edo period. The salaries of the 6,000 samurai handed down from the era of Uesugi Kenshin and the various expenses borne by the shogunate completely overwhelmed the finances of Yonezawa. The lords of several generations were not good at governing the people. When Uesugi Takayama came to power, the entire domain was broken and the people were poor, with a population of less than 100,000. The countryside was unprecedentedly poor, the people fled collectively, and the birth rate was very low. To the negative number.

This is the final result of making money without any moral principles and only knowing how to exploit and oppress ordinary farmers. If one day the Yamanouchi domain becomes like this, then the disaster of national destruction and extinction is almost imminent.

Kobayata will definitely not sit idly by and watch this terrible situation happen. He wants to change the poor appearance of Totomi and make it the richest and most prosperous place in Tokaido.

This matter is certainly not achieved overnight, and requires a comprehensive and detailed package plan. Kobayata's original intention was just to make a small effort to make something, but now seeing this situation, after inspecting various resources, he has made up his mind to make a big one.

After all, Kobayata has a clear understanding of the entire Ejiri domain, including land, population, cities, towns, villages, and rice and wheat products. He already has an economic account of Ejiri in his mind, and can use his golden abacus to calculate a beautiful number.

Kobayata immediately sent Murakami Yoshimitsu to rush back to Yamanouchi with his own handwritten letter, which only had five words written on it.

"Three thousand kan, wait." (I, Kobayata, send money!)

Then Kobayata immediately returned to Ejiri Castle to prepare tools, food and necessary start-up funds. After the spring plowing was completed, he conscripted 2,000 able-bodied men in the territory as the governor of Ejiri Castle, paid part of the money himself, and began to build dams along the Tenryu River.

The construction of dams was strongly supported by the local people in Ejiri. As the most important river in Totomi, the large-scale flooding over the years brought huge troubles and losses to these local lords. Many lands along the river banks became low-lying swamps that could not be cultivated due to the frequent flooding of the Tenryu River.

Kobayata's prestige was not enough. After all, he was old and he was not a strict person. He had to ask Matsushita Ichisao, the chief general of the Ejiri front, who was familiar to him, to summon the local lords to confirm the ownership of these swamps.

Although these people occupied the swamps along the coast, they were useless. In fact, these swamps can theoretically be developed into high-quality paddy fields, but the Tenryu River has been flooding for years, and even the best paddy fields cannot be cultivated. Some plots of land are even flooded twice a year, which are truly the plots of land that are despised by people and dogs.

After the ownership was confirmed, Kobayata assigned all these swamps that had been produced over the years to the direct territory of Yamanouchi Yoshiharu. Then he transferred the small pieces of Zhixing that were originally from the Shirakawa samurai and confiscated by Yamanouchi Yoshiharu to the names of these country owners. Originally, these small pieces of Zhixing that produced 30 or 50 stones a year had very high management costs due to their fragmentation. Now that they are handed over to the countrymen, they can also get a wave of their loyalty, which is a benefit without spending money.

Later, Kobayata took advantage of the time of repairing the embankment to set up flood discharge outlets and water diversion weirs on the dam embankments of the river sections near these swamps, actually turning these swamps into flood discharge areas. Seeing how "kind" Xiaoping was, the Chinese lords were all grateful. Not only did they not occupy their fertile land, they also exchanged their own good land for these worthless swamps and set up water conservancy projects to benefit them.

These matters of preparing water conservancy projects do not require Koyata's supervision. They are beneficial to the countrymen and farmers. Everyone from top to bottom is very motivated. Koyata also advanced 500 kan of the town fee for Ejiri, who was to be deported back to Yamanouchi this year, and was sure that Yamanouchi Yoshiharu would believe that he would send the money.

Sure enough, seven or eight days later, dozens of hatamoto foot soldiers carried things on their shoulders and rushed to Ejiri with a large cart.

What's more terrifying is that Koyata's ordinary letter asking for money actually caught a big fish. Yamanouchi Yoshiharu and Yamanouchi Yoshikatsu, father and son, actually rushed to Ejiri in person. When the two saw Koyata coming to greet them, they did not immediately ask Koyata what he wanted to do specifically, but just asked someone to hand over 2,000 taels of gold and 1,000 kan of Yongle money to Koyata.

Koyata welcomed the father and son into the castle.

"Koyata, tell me about the plan." Yamanouchi Yoshiharu changed his hunting clothes with the help of his attendants.