Although he didn't really come to be a vendor, this identity was a good disguise, and the group was also busy spreading out the things they brought, bags of snow-white sea salt, iron hoes, and plows, which made the onlookers look hot. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

There were many young women among the onlookers, chattering and laughing, quite youthful and budding. It's a pity that Mei Foo Li also has a literary custom, which shattered Xia Nan and Lin Weiye's thoughts about ethnic minority girls. Lin Weiye secretly rejoiced, fortunately Fu Nanying did not have a tattoo, otherwise he would definitely not be able to accept it.

Wang said to Xia Nan that no matter how deep he went into the mountains, he was not very familiar with the terrain, so he could let his uncle take them there. His uncle made a living by collecting medicine and hunting on weekdays, because he often went to the county town to sell wild animal skins, and could speak some Chinese, so there was no problem in communication.

Wang's uncle's surname is Li, his name is Li Muqing, and he is a little strange that these people want to go to the upper reaches of the Changhua River, and this place is rarely visited by Li people. If you want to collect medicine, you can find it on the mountains upstream, and you can also collect it on the nearby hills.

"Yes, go to Shiluling, do you know this place?" Lin Weiye asked.

"I haven't heard of it." Li Muqing refused very simply. Summer Nan's heart suddenly sank to the bottom.

Lin Weiye did not give up, and continued to compare: "There is a river under the mountain, which flows into the Changhua River, and it is called Shilu River. ”

Li Benqing still shook his head. Lin Weiye thought of a little, and asked with the last hope: "Then is there a mountain here that produces green stones?" ”

The so-called green stone is copper ore. The name Ishiroku comes from copper ore. Because the local Li and Han ethnic groups in Hainan are accustomed to putting modifiers after them to express the habit of nouns when speaking, the so-called Shilu is actually "green stone".

Shiluling was first noticed, not because of the iron ore, but because of the open-pit copper ore on the surface here. Since the Qing Dynasty, there have been people digging and stealing digging. It was not until 1935 that when the Qiongya Industrial Bureau sent people to Shiluling to investigate the copper mine, it was discovered for the first time that the richest mineral reserves in Shilu were iron ore.

"Yes, yes." Li Muqing suddenly realized, "You are going to Yayuling!" ”

Xia Nan naturally didn't know what Yayuling was, but Lin Weiye knew, and the content of the somewhat vague textbooks in college became clear.

"Yes, yes, it's Yayuling!" Lin Weiye nodded again and again, thinking that he was really confused, the place name Shilu was only used in the Qing Dynasty. Now it is still the world of the Ming Dynasty.

Early the next morning, the group took the local bamboo raft and went upstream, and it was much faster to walk by water than by land. Because it is the dry season, the amount of water is not large, and the water flow is very gentle, so it is not difficult to prop the boat upstream with a penny, but it is often necessary to pass through the rocky shallows, and everyone often has to get off the raft to push it over. In some places, rocky beaches are exposed, and bamboo rafts have to be carried over to continue on.

At three or four o'clock in the afternoon, the raft finally arrived at what would later be known as Fork River Town, which was still a barren grassland. The current became shallow, and the raft rubbed the sand and gravel at the bottom of the river more than once. As for the Shilu River, this tributary of the Changhua River is now not able to sail at all, and can only barely drown people's ankles.

The group decided to abandon the ship and land here, and everyone worked together to drag the bamboo raft ashore. According to Li Muqing, it is more than ten miles to walk upstream along the river. Because it was getting late, everyone camped here and prepared to leave early the next morning.

The next day, they all got up at five o'clock in the morning, hurriedly had breakfast and went back on the road. They continued their journey upstream, turning around and turning around until noon, they finally reached the foot of the mountain, where the clear water flowed slowly out of a valley in front of them.

"This is Yayuling." Li Muqing pointed.

Lin Weiye knew the place, and he looked in the direction pointed by Li Muqing, it was a reddish-brown mountain, and this area should be the famous Hainan Shilu magnetite.

Lin Weiye was excited, Shilu Iron Mine! This is the largest open-pit iron-rich mine in China, with an average iron content of more than 51.2%, and magnetite reserves of nearly 300 million tons! It is also accompanied by a variety of ores such as cobalt, copper, nickel, silver, sulfur, dolomite, etc., and if it were not for the lack of coal production here, Shiroku would be a natural large-scale coal-iron complex base.

It took them almost three hours to reach the top of the mountain. As far as the eye can see, there are high and low hills, savanna vegetation in the near distance, and lush forests in the distance.

Lin Weiye carefully observed the surrounding soil and vegetation, and the soil on the hillside was more typical of southern laterite, with no special ore outcrops. Although the mine claims to be open-pit, it is covered with several meters of soil.

Lin Weiye took out the hoe, and according to the previous experience of exploring iron ore, he chose a place to dig more than one meter deep, and found magnetite ore. He knocked down a piece and looked at it, and sure enough, it was a rare iron-rich ore. Digging a few more places on the northern slope of the hill, there was an even more exciting discovery, digging up an emerald green stone - copper ore.

Seeing that iron ore and copper ore were discovered, Xia Nan was excited. He began to care about the problem of mining, "It's not easy to mine such a big mountain, right?" ”

"It's not that hard to mine." Lin Weiye replied, "If you completely ignore the laws and regulations on mine safety production, you can give me 50 workers." Purely manual operation, only one shift during the day, 2 tons of ore per person per day is no problem. 100 tons of ore can be produced in one day, and it is almost 40,000 tons of iron ore in a year. When the Japanese occupied Hainan Island, when the mines were opened in Shiroku, each worker worked 14 hours per shift, and the quota was 8 tons. At that time, apart from a small number of pickaxes, there was not much mechanized mining. ”

40,000 tons of iron ore a year! Although I don't know how much this iron ore is smelted into pig iron, Xia Nan still smiled crookedly.

Lin Weiye was not so optimistic, he estimated the amount of mining and the difficulty of transportation, and said with a sinking face: "Now the ore is found, but according to our route from the landing here, the transportation of iron ore is a problem, the Changhua River originally provided a convenient passage to the sea, but unfortunately Shiluling is not on the bank of the Changhua River, although the Shilu River can be connected to the Changhua River, but it is impossible to sail at all." It is difficult to take the waterway directly, and the water depth in the upper reaches of the Changhua River in the dry season is not enough for ships to pass through, otherwise the locals will not use bamboo rafts as a means of transportation. It is no wonder that after the Japanese occupied the Shiroku Iron Mine, they had to build a railway from Shiroku to Hachisho, and then go to sea from Hachisho. ”