Governor Zhao's fears soon became a reality.

Three days later, news came that the fleet had run aground just after crossing Siyang County. A large number of sunken boats blocked the river and the procession was forced to stop.

Zhao Kongzhao hurriedly rushed to Siyang County, eighty miles away, with the deputy chief soldier of Caoyun and Chen Wangmo, the deputy chief soldier of Pingjiang.

The prefect of Huai'an was also called by Zhao Kongzhao. Huai'an Mansion belongs to Nanzhili, but it is not under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Yingtian, but is under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Caoyun and the Governor of Fengyang. Therefore, the prefect of Huai'an is a direct subordinate of Zhao Kongzhao, of course, he comes when he calls and goes when he waves.

It took the fleet three days to travel 80 miles, and you can imagine how difficult this trip was.

An hour later, Governor Zhao and Ping Jiangbo caught up with the tail of the fleet...... Two thousand boats lined up on the canal in pairs, at least forty miles apart.

Looking at the spectacular scene of the boat blockage in front of him, Ping Jiangbo asked Cao Ding and learned that they had been blocked here for a day and a night.

"Fuck!" Chen Wangmo took a depressed sip and said, "At this rate, this little bit of grain is not enough for the people on the ship to eat." It's better to go directly to the empty ship and go to Shandong to buy grain and transport it to the capital! ”

Hearing this, Zhao Kongzhao turned his head and looked at him deeply.

Although Chen Wangmo is an earl, but the Ming Dynasty values literature and light martial arts, he is still a little afraid of Zhao Kongzhao, and he can't help but say: "I'm joking." ”

"Why didn't you say it earlier? Hindsight. Zhao Kongzhao sighed and rode his horse forward.

Chen Wangmo reacted at this time, it turned out that the Governor actually thought this was a good idea......

"Hey, hey." Ping Jiangbo laughed and hurriedly patted his horse to follow.

The two of them walked more than 40 miles, and arrived at the place where the boat was sitting and sinking at noon. It turned out to be a wide shoal, and there was even a huge sandbar in the middle of the river, which the locals called Mapeng Island.

The water flow around Mapeng Island is slow, and the sediment is very easy to silt, and every year in the dry season, the Caoyun Yamen has to organize manpower to dredge and desilt. It's only April, and Zhao Kongzhao feels that it shouldn't be a big problem.

Who thinks that he is too optimistic. The canal was cut off from water before, and a huge amount of sediment was deposited here, which made the work of the past year in vain, and the siltation situation was even more serious.

The two magistrates of Sihong and Suqian had already taken the people to direct the fiber pulling on the spot.

Hearing that Cao Governor and Fu Zun were coming, the two county magistrates who were covered in mud and water hurriedly stepped forward to greet them.

"What's going on now?" Zhao Kongzhao turned over and dismounted, and when he saw that the newly changed official boots fell into the yellow mud soup again, he couldn't help frowning and scolding his hometown: "! ”

"Back to the department, the river in this area is too wide, which makes it very difficult to pull the fiber." Sihongzhi County replied busily.

"Our two counties are trying their best to negotiate and try to come up with a solution as soon as possible." Suqian Zhixian also replied.

Zhao Kongzhao knew that 'active consultation' meant 'wanton ridicule', and he scolded again, "Don't do serious inspections!" With the support of his own soldiers, he walked up the embankment angrily.

When he went up to the embankment, he also had a big head, the river was too wide, and the boat sat in the middle of the river, and the people couldn't pull it from the shore.

The slender men had to go down waist-deep to pull the fibers. The feet were soft and deep mud, and there was no way to exert force, and one by one it was slippery and crooked, but the boat still did not move.

"With such a wide river, why don't you let the boats behind pass by?" Zhao Kongzhao frowned and asked.

"That's the deepest place, and it's even shallower on the edges, so you can't get through it at all." Suqian Zhixian smiled bitterly and pointed to the boats stranded next to him and said, "Those few ships are not believers, and they are all sunk." ”

Zhao Kongzhao paced by the river for a long time, and finally gave a depressed order: "Unload the boat!" Empty the boat, drive over and load it on! ”

"Yes!" The two magistrates hurriedly took the order and left, they had already thought of such a simple method. However, they did not have the right to order the ship to unload the grain, and they could only consult with the officers who escorted the ship before.

But the other party resolutely disagreed, there is no village in front of it, there is no store in the back, there is not even a wharf, let alone a warehouse, how to unload the ship and load the ship? Besides, it's still raining in the sky, and the grain is just lying on the shore, and it won't take half a day for it to be watered through.

When you arrive in Beijing, you don't need to send it to Taicang, just send it to the wine field to make wine.

Now that the governor has given the order, the officers don't have to take care of it, so they will naturally do it obediently.

So the county first drove a small boat to unload the grain on the five or six stranded boats, bag by bag, and transport it to the reed shed that was temporarily erected by the river.

Don't look at the cao boat is half loaded, a boat also has nearly 300 sacks of rice. The boat can only be loaded with five or six bags at most, so I don't dare to load more, otherwise it will have to run aground.

This was extremely inefficient, and it was not until midnight that the boats were emptied.

The empty boats automatically floated out of the silt and were pulled across the damned river by the people.

~~

The river was empty, but the boats behind did not dare to keep up, otherwise they would have to run aground.

Moreover, there are two thousand of them, and they have been unloaded and reloaded like the six boats, and it is estimated that they will all have to enter winter when they arrive in the capital.

"Prepare overnight and start dredging tomorrow morning." Zhao Kongzhao wiped the rain from his face and ordered directly.

Artificial rivers are the most prone to siltation, and the Caoyun Yamen has been set up for 1560 years, and there has not been a year of unsilting. Nature has accumulated abundant means, and it can also be desilted during the peach, volt, and autumn floods.

"This ......" Suqian Zhi County and Sihong Zhi County looked embarrassed.

"How?" Zhao Kongzhao frowned irritably and said, "You don't want to do it?" ”

"The order of the ministry, how dare the subordinate disobey it?" The two county magistrates hurriedly said guilty and explained: "It's really because the prime minister of the river is here today and ordered us to go up to the Yellow River embankment to guard flood control from tomorrow." ”

"Yes, Ministry, Weng Zhongcheng said that this year's wheat water is far stronger than in previous years, and the newly repaired embankment must continue to be reinforced, and it will be on ......duty day and night," Sihongzhi County pointed to ten miles away, a high city wall with shining lights in the night, and the sound was like a gnat.

It wasn't a city wall, it was the Yellow River embankment. The light of the fire is the lantern in the hands of the people who patrol the embankment. The Yellow River and the canal run parallel to Huai'an, less than ten miles apart.

The magistrates of each county are also in charge of the rivers of their own counties, and accept the leadership of the river yamen in flood control and water conservancy affairs. Being an official in this kind of ghost place is really a beep dog.

Sure enough, the two of them ate a meal from Lord Fuzun. "Listen, is this human talk? The order of the river yamen is important, can the words of the ministry be a deaf ear? ”

"Don't dare." The two of them quickly shook their heads into rattles. The governor of Caoyun is also the governor of Fengyang, and he is their big boss, of course, more important than the prime minister of the river.

But the problem is that the Yellow River is much more terrifying than the canal. The canal is impassable, at most the grain cannot be transported north, and the people of Huai'an are not hungry. But if the canal bursts, the two counties will follow in the footsteps of Pei County, Zou County, Teng County and other places, and become a yellow flood area......

But he didn't dare to mention this to the Governor, so the two had to bite the bullet.

Zhao Kongzhao looked at the continuous rain in the sky, and his heart felt a burst of irritability that could not be suppressed.

"I will not delay your river work. Well, give you two days, and if you can't clear the channel after two days, you will take off your own black yarn and ask for sin! ”

He dropped the undoubted word, and went down to rest on the embankment.

"You guys have to figure it out." As soon as the governor left, the prefect also changed his face and whispered to the two subordinates: "You have been wronged. ”

When Si Hong heard this, Zhixian muttered: "It's not that the imperial court doesn't know the situation here, what's wrong with the boat leaving a few days late?" Why do you have to join in the fun? ”

"Yes, even if the ministry sends a few boats to test the water first, it won't be in such a dilemma as now." The magistrate of Suqian also nodded in agreement.

"You're just staring at what you're doing, of course." The prefect smiled bitterly and lowered his voice: "It must be that the imperial court is under pressure." Don't you see it yet? The ministry is now at all costs, and it is necessary to let the cao ship go north as soon as possible. Don't keep your eyes peeled, two. ”

"Well, I see." The two poor magistrates bowed their hands to Fuzun and went back to find a way to see if they could take care of it.

~~

In the end, the two came up with a solution, which was for Suqian Liuzhi County to lead people to dredge the canal, and Sihong Fengzhi County to guard the Yellow River embankment. Once there was a flood situation, or Weng Dali came to inspect, Feng Zhixian hurriedly sent someone to call Liu Zhixian to the embankment, so that he could barely cope with it.

In this era, the dredging during the wet period was to drag the dredging by the boat, that is, to catch the iron dragon like a big nail rake and sink it to the bottom of the water, tie it to the stern with a rope, and then the boatman rowed desperately to let the boat go down the river. If this is repeated a hundred and ten times, it is like ploughing, digging up the silt at the bottom of the river and carrying it away with running water.

The second is to use a big iron spoon-like iron spoon to drive a boat to fish out river mud, fill a boat to the shore to unload it, and then come back to dig.

But these two methods are not efficient, Liu Zhixian collected hundreds of boats, hundreds of people kept digging and digging on the river, fence and fence, it took two days to complete the dredging of this two-mile long river.

As soon as the dredging was completed, the sky was thundering, and the spring rain, which had been unhurried, suddenly became urgent and fierce.

"Damn, it's done in vain." Liu Zhixian was not careful, slipped and fell on the sandbank, crying and scolding.

Looking at the rain, the water level of the canal will rise soon. Knowing this, there would be no need for dredging at all, and even those boats of grain would not have to be wasted, and when the water level rises, the boats will automatically be able to get out of trouble.

Half of his body was soaked, and Zhao Kongzhao, who was standing in the rainstorm, was also mixed.

Happily, since this rain, there is no need to worry about running aground. The worry is that such a heavy rain will inevitably bring greater flooding, can the Yellow River embankment, which is riddled with holes, be able to stop it?

"The order goes down, all ships unmooring and set sail, and leave this section as soon as possible!" Governor Zhao suppressed the uneasiness in his heart and ordered in a deep voice.

"Ministry, how can the brothers sail in such a heavy rain?" Ping Jiangbo frowned.

"I don't care about that much!" Zhao Kongzhao's voice trembled, and he pointed to the sky and said: "The black clouds are coming from the north, and it is estimated that the upstream has already fallen, and the wheat yellow water is almost coming before and after!" ”

As if to confirm his words, after a snow-white lightning bolt, the rumbling sound continued.

At first, it was spring thunder. Later, it's spring tide!

ps. The second update, ask for a monthly pass!