"We set out from Yilan City, walked about 2,500 miles along the rivers, and arrived at a small town at the foot of Xing'an Mountain. This was the territory of the founding Earl of Bochegen, a country granted by the Emperor of Han. This count was the leader of the Mongolian Maoming'an tribe. His ancestors were the son of Tushetukhan. Later, they moved eastward and once joined the Jurchens."

Li Xin sat on a sled with a pencil and wrote this passage on parchment. After he learned about Siboer's vastness, he decided to collect information here and then submit it to the emperor. He hoped that the emperor could learn about the truth about this northern border and hoped that the empire could incorporate this rich and vast land into the Han Dynasty.

The north wind was howling, snowflakes were flying, and the wind blew across his face like a knife. Li Xin was wearing deerskin gloves, but he still felt his fingers stiff. This was really a north country with ice and ice dripping water.

He reached out and surrounded the marten fur, which only had only a pair of eyes, tightened a little. Li Xin held the pencil and continued to write. He couldn't help but sigh that fortunately there was a pencil, otherwise he wouldn't be able to write in the north. The ink had long since frozen into ice, and even the brush was stiff like a stone. This kind of pencil is very useful and can be used at any time, so there is no need to worry about extreme cold. It is really an irreplaceable writing object in the north.

"The Emperor of Han Dynasty granted the title of three counts of the Maoming'an tribe and dozens of viscounts, barons, lords, etc. Some of them grazed on the banks of Hulun Lake, some grazed on the banks of Ergun River, and some went to the area around the Shileka River. Earl Chegen took his tribe to the area between the Great Xing'an Mountains and the Xing'an Mountains between Chechen Province, Beihai Province, and Xing'an Province."

"They established a station on the banks of Yinguoda River upstream of the Shileka River, and named this station Chita with the title given to Chegen by the Emperor of Han."

"The distance is far longer than I expected. Although we are along the river, the river is winding and winding. Our destination is in the east, but we often have to turn south or north with the river, and sometimes even turn west, which leads to our journey increasing continuously. According to Sore, we are only halfway away from the intersection of our destination Shileka River and Erguna River."

"Oh my God, it's really crazy. Here, there are only snow, dense forests. Towering trees and wide rivers. Now the river is full of ice three or four feet thick, and the land is full of snow that is as deep as legs. If it is summer and autumn, maybe we can take a boat faster. After all, that's downstream."

Li Xin almost forgot how many days he had traveled in this snowy world. He only remembered that every day he saw was snowy and almost the same scene. It took him a long time to see a village, especially after leaving Beihai Province, the place we are marching now has not been included in the territory of the empire. Between the Beihai, Chechnya, Xing'an, and Heilongjiang provinces, there is a cave here. Now it is mainly the Mongols of Mongolia, the Solons and Daurs, known as Tungus. In addition, some Khalkha Mongols and Buryat Mongols are scattered."

"We occasionally see some wood-built walls in the dense forests by the river. There are some thatched huts and tents, some tree houses, but they are basically very low. The lifestyles of these tribes are similar. They mainly make a living by grazing, hunting and fishing, but they mainly grazed reindeer, raised a small number of cattle and sheep, and raised some pigs. However, their camps are mostly located in mossy fields, that is, on the northern slopes of those mountains. The mountains here are not high, and there are dense forests at the foot of the mountain. But when they reach the top of the mountain, there are no woods, but tundra, which is the favorite food for deer here."

"The herdsmen set up camps on the northern hillside. But they don't need to grazing the reindeer. The deer will grow them directly. The deer will return to the camp by themselves. The camp at the river at the foot of the mountain is the camp for these tribes in summer. In the summer, they will come to the camp in the forest by the river and hunt and fish."

"The people here seem to be very poor, but they are self-sufficient. Their houses are mostly tree houses, thatched houses or leather tents. There are no decorations in the houses, they are all very low and simple. But they hunt, fish and grazing, and they are self-sufficient, and they seem to be very happy."

"As the empire expanded northward, post roads have been built in several provinces such as Chechnya, Beihai, Xing'an, etc., and many merchants have begun to flock to this ancient and closed place. They have brought various commodities from the Central Plains, swords, iron pots, tea, etc. in exchange for various precious furs in the hands of these ministries."

"Because of this, when we passed along the way, not only did the herdsmen of Maoming'an's ministry welcome us, but even the Tungusliners who had not been included in the empire were not afraid of us. Those who stayed in the forest villages by the river would come on sleds and ask what goods we brought over."

"We took some things and traded some supplies with these tribes along the way, mostly dried meat and dried fish. I hate these things, and dry firewood is as smelly as it is, but Yakut dogs love these the most. We even hired some famous hunters as guides from the villages along the way. They are familiar with the Yinguoda River to the Shileka River, and also know a lot about the Nibchu River, the Onen River, the Erguna River, and even the Heilong River."

"The cost of hiring these hunters is not high. They are most interested in our swords and also very interested in our muskets. We successfully hired them with one man and one high-quality Miao sword. They are also very interested in the muskets. I promised them that if there is a battle at that time, if they can help us, they can kill one enemy and give them a pistol, kill two enemies and give them a musket. If we hadn't refused, I'm afraid there would be hundreds of Tungus hunters in the team behind us. I had to refuse them. We don't have time to wait for them to prepare. We need to arrive at the destination early, and many hunters only have simple equipment. I'm worried that their speed would affect their roads."

As I finished writing this, the team stopped.

Li Xin stopped writing and raised his head.

Soray turned his head and told him that it was getting late and they were going to camp here.

It is impossible to rush to travel at night, the sky is starting to dark, and it is still a while before black, but they need to camp in advance and even go hunting.

Along the way, they used no more to carry, and most of them hunt and fish wherever they went.

Solei got off the sled and untied his deer. Several Ewenks came over. Like many Tungus people, they had a very wide face. The outline of their faces was not very obvious, their skin was dark, and they were ordinary short. All Ewenks were very short, most of them were only over five feet tall. Few were taller than six feet. If converted to the new scale, most of them were less than one meter six.

Reindeer were removed, and the Ewenki people were older than the same tribe. Li Xin had already known them and knew that they were deer husbands in this team.

Their main task is to release deer.

When the trip ends every day and starts camping, these deer husbands will saddle the untied reindeer and drive them to the nearby mountains to eat deer moss.

After driving the deer up the mountain, they came back and ignored it. In the morning, they went up the mountain to shout the deer back.

When Li Xin first saw them driving the deer up the mountain, he was shocked. Can the deer come back if he does this, and won’t he run away?

As it turned out, his worries were redundant. The next day, it was still light. The voices of several deer husbands faintly came from the mountain. Their voices were strange. He was a singing voice. They shouted for a while, and the reindeer all came down the mountain.

When the deer is called back to the camp, the deer husbands will give the reindeer some feed one by one.

In Solei's words, this is their tradition of making the deer people. They domesticate deer and harness them. Many times they don't need to bring any supplies when they go out. They hunt wherever they go. And deer also eat wherever they go.

This situation is largely due to Li Xin's understanding. Whether the Han people in the Central Plains march and fight or go out on horseback, they must prepare horse feed. However, this situation is somewhat similar to the Mongolians. The Mongolians usually don't bring much food when they go. When they go, they will trip a horse on their legs and tie them up. The horse can walk. But they cannot run, so that the horse can eat grass for the night and continue running after eating some feed after dawn.

I didn't expect that the reindeer of the Ewenk people could do this, and their deer was even smarter and more obedient, and they didn't even have to tie them up, and they didn't have to look at them.

The deer husbands drove the deer up the mountain, and the rest of the Ewenks began to find a river beside and began to dig holes in the ice surface, and they wanted to fish in the ice river.

Fishing under the ice is also the master's ability of many forest tribes. They will be very experienced in finding a river berth because the river berth is slow, and most of the fish under the ice in winter are in the river berth. Fishing in the river berth will never come home empty-handed.

At this time, the Yakuts carried their dogs into the woods by the river with their bows and arrows.

The Ewenk reindeer directly caught up to the mountains to eat moss, while they brought dogs into the forest to hunt, both for food for dogs and for themselves.

The remaining people started to take axes to the river to cut trees. They camped directly on the ice, and surrounded the sled cart, which was a camp. There was no need to worry about the attacks of bears and wolves. However, it was cold at night and needed to set up a fire to keep warm.

"From here down the river, and another five hundred miles, a Nibchu River flows into it. At the intersection of the two rivers, there is a Nibchu Village, which is a settlement of the Ewenki people of the Sorenbiao tribe, also known as the Zhima tribe. It is very lively and has always been a place for trading in nearby tribes. In the past, the tax collectors of the Jurchens would come there to collect taxes every year, and each tribe had to pay marten there for paying marten. There were also many Mongolian, Jurchen and Han merchants who came there to buy marten."

Listening to the hunter's words, Li Xin mapped it out and drew another paragraph on his map album. He also carefully asked the hunters and marked the nearby tribe name, tribe location, population, etc. one by one.

Finally, he drew the Nibchu River on the map, drew a village mark at the intersection of the two rivers, wrote the three words Nibchu, and marked it as a market and merchant town.

After adding a few details to the map, Li Xin couldn't help but shake his head.

In the Central Plains, five hundred miles have already left the province, but in this northern country, five hundred miles is just a river channel. The Tungus tribe here may have only tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, but they can be distributed in areas of thousands or even tens of thousands of miles.

But they are closely connected. Even if they are distributed, they can still grasp the location information of the tribes of the same tribe. Whenever there is a big event, they can even support each other.

What a magical northern country.

Li Xin became a dog and was tightly wrapped in a thick leather robe.

Over there, a group of fishing men have successfully caught a lot of fish. Their fishing method is also very simple. They make a hole in the ice in the river bay and then take out the fish hook. The fish hook is also quite strange. There are many fish hooks tied to a long rope, one at a time. The hook is very thick. There are meat hanging on the hook, and then a stone is tied at the end of the rope and throw it into the ice hole. After a while, the hook can be started.

It’s always so simple for them to catch fish. If you throw the hook down for a while, you don’t have to do anything. After a while, you can catch many big fish. As soon as these fish come out of water, they will freeze into hard ice mass as soon as they untie the hook.

After a while, those guys have caught a lot of fish, not only can people eat, but dogs eat. They no longer continue fishing and start their daily routine.

These guys actually took off all of them, then jumped into the ice hole full of ice and took a shower. Li Xin looked at the rising white gas from afar, and felt cold for these guys laughing and making noise.

If he beat him to death, he wouldn't jump into the ice hole to take a bath in such a cold season. He was even a little surprised. Aren't these guys afraid of the cold?

He tried to ask them, but they said it was warm to take a bath in ice water.

Li Xin has only heard that building snow houses or making snow caves in the snow. No matter how cold the north wind is in the snow, staying in the snow caves and snow houses will be very warm.

He asked these natives for verification, and as a result, they built a snow house for him very easily. It was about the size of a tent. The large pieces of snow turned into snow bricks and slowly set them up. Finally, it became a dome snow house, without any ventilation.

After getting in, I felt extremely warm inside.

Since then, the first thing Li Xin did after camping every day was to build a sleaf. Now he can build a sleaf by himself without relying on others.

However, except for him, most other Yakut, Ewenk and even the Mongols did not build snow houses or dig snow holes. They directly built a tent around the snow pile, and put a few pieces of leather in the tent, so they could sleep peacefully with bear skins.

No matter how those people laughed at him, Li Xin insisted on building a snow house. Every day, the snow house was built, and several Han compatriots who were traveling with him would squeeze in to spend the night together.
Chapter completed!