On September 17, Li Laosi rode a horse on the Chao Phraya River plain in Siam.

Li Dingguo rode next to Li Laosi and introduced the situation in the mountains to Li Laosi.

"Uncle, now the Japanese samurai in the mountains have basically controlled the situation. The indigenous people of Indochina were basically suppressed, except for a few samurai who failed and were driven out by the natives, and most of the samurai succeeded in becoming administrators in the mountains. ”

Li Laosi asked curiously: "There are still samurai who can't beat the natives and are driven out?" ”

Li Dingguo said with a smile: "There are always samurai who are indiscriminate and not skilled in martial arts. ”

Li Laosi nodded and looked to the north.

It was very cost-effective to use samurai as grassroots managers in the mountains: the level of productivity development in Indochina was very low, and the peasants here were not as industrious as the Han Chinese, and could only make ends meet all year round. Although the land here is fertile, the people here can get by, and the adults only cultivate two or three acres of paddy fields per person, and only harvest five or six koku of rice per person on average. Counting the elderly and children, each person only has about three stone of grain for rations.

Therefore, although the samurai were able to obtain one-tenth of the total field endowment as a slu, they only obtained the means of subsistence of the four natives, twelve stone of grain. According to the price of grain in Fanjiazhuang, these grains are only thirty taels.

In other words, the samurai maintained order in the mountains for Li Zhi, and the monthly money was only two or five yuan per month.

Moreover, these warriors must be able to write and martial arts, not only to be able to suppress the mountain people in the mountains with exquisite martial arts, but also to have arithmetic ability to collect taxes and settle accounts.

In the whole of East and Southeast Asia, the only group with such civil and military talents is the Japanese samurai.

Each Japanese samurai had to send nearly 300 taels of land income to Li Zhi every year. Moreover, the samurai were often adept at water conservancy and terraced techniques, and were able to supervise the lazy indigenous Southeast Asian natives to develop agriculture. Therefore, Li Zhi's future income from the Indochina Peninsula will continue to expand.

Li Laosi felt that Sanada Nobuyuki's proposal before his death to use samurai to manage the mountains was really a good suggestion.

The most important thing is that the samurai also liked to do it. The samurai enjoyed being a grassroots manager. Transporting unemployed samurai from Japan to Southeast Asia greatly reduced the risk of samurai uprisings and wars in Japan.

It's an arrangement that kills three birds with one stone.

Li Laosi felt that with the smooth development of the plan, the prince would definitely praise himself for this arrangement.

In the next few years, as the indigenous people of Southeast Asia who moved to the mountainous areas gradually developed valley fields and terraced fields, Indochina Peninsula will send tens of millions of taels of land to one town and nine provinces every year. With the gradual increase of this income, the strength of the prince will also be on a higher level.

The prince can raise more tiger army, and I heard that the prince has a plan to expand the army recently.

But the prince is obviously not a person who is obsessed with money. For Li Zhi, it was more important to let the Han people colonize the new land. In other words, the most important thing is to settle the Han immigrants who have moved from the hinterland, and truly turn Southeast Asia into the land of the Han people.

Li Zhi invested heavily in the migration of immigrants, subsidizing Han Chinese farmers who were willing to go south to reclaim Southeast Asia.

Li Dingguo pointed to a forest in front of him and said loudly: "Uncle, after that grove, it is the 179th Colony of Chao Phraya River." ”

Now the king of Qi widely publicized the benefits of immigration to Southeast Asia in various places, and the private steamship companies sent shipwretches of immigrants and shiploads of immigrant materials to Indochina like dumping goods. The new immigrants arrived in places where they didn't even have time to pick up names and start building, and the military administration of Indochina had to name these Han Chinese colonies by numbers.

Li Laosi sat up straight on the horse and looked at Li Dingguo's fingers.

The green fields of the Chao Phraya River Plain caught Li Laosi's eyes.

There are low rainforests and rice paddies between the trees, and the terrain is very flat. A small river runs through it every other distance, making the plain extremely rich and fertile.

There are many undeveloped places on the plains, and there are many woods.

If we talk about the conditions for agricultural production alone, Southeast Asia can be said to be uniquely blessed. Sunshine is abundant, precipitation is abundant, and the plains are flat and there are many rivers. However, in the seventeenth century, the indigenous peoples here did not have the organizational capacity to vigorously develop agriculture, and wasted such fertile plains.

The fertile Mekong Delta, for example, was largely uninhabited swampy during this era.

However, this situation will be changed by the Han people who move in one boat after another.

Li Laosi "drove" on the ground, rode his horse and rushed out, galloping towards the 179th colony in front.

Beyond the woods, Li Laosi saw a village of fifty or sixty brick houses.

Dozens of children are jumping and playing near the village, and a few old men and women are there to watch over the children.

Outside the village, there are paddy fields with no end in sight. Those paddy fields spread on both sides of a small river, and I don't know how many acres there are. A dragon-tail cart has been erected on the river, and there are buffaloes spinning next to it, and the river water is constantly flowing into the paddy fields through the irrigation canal.

Li Laosi saw some farmers driving their cattle and planting rice in the paddy fields.

Unlike the paddy fields in the south of the Yangtze River, the paddy fields here in the Chao Phraya River Plain are located in the tropics, and the coldest winter temperature is more than 10 degrees Celsius. There is plenty of sunlight all year round, and rice can be grown three times a year. So even now in September, farmers are still planting the third crop of rice.

Li Laosi became interested in the rice transplanters that were driven by the charge, and stopped to take a look.

The machines were powered by the accumulators, and as the buffalo kept moving forward, the machines inserted seedlings from a large iron tray into the paddy field. Li Laosi carefully observed the seedlings in those fields and found that the seedlings were planted correctly, and the row spacing between the seedlings was well maintained, which looked very neat.

Li Laosi jumped off his horse, walked to the depths of the ridges, and shouted to the peasants: "Fellow, what is the name of your machine? ”

The peasants looked up at Li Laosi, and when they saw that Li Laosi was dressed in a blood-red military uniform like a big official, they replied respectfully: "Official! This is the animal-powered rice transplanter that the prince sent us! ”

Li Laosi asked: "Do you also need to use machines for rice transplanting?" ”

The old farmer stopped the ploughing cattle beside him and replied with a smile: "Official, this prince's rice transplanting machine is really a fairy machine. In the past, we could plant up to seven acres of land a day, but we couldn't plant one acre of land, so one person could only take care of twenty acres of crops. ”

"Now with this animal-powered rice transplanter, we can plant five acres of paddy fields a day, and the busiest thing about rice transplanting has become the easiest thing. Coupled with the animal harvester that the prince gave us a loan to buy, it is not a problem for us to take care of forty acres of paddy fields alone. ”

"With the newly invented machine of the prince, this Siamese plain will really become our cornucopia!"