I

Throughout Madagascar, there are a total of 18 races, and each race has obvious differences.

For example, the tribes on the east coast have obvious black features in their faces and facial features, but their skin color is more like yellow people, and some settlements have Arab features. Their most formal attire is directly Arabic robes, and there are even circumcisions from the Green Cult.

The area where Deng Youzhang and the others are located belongs to the territory of the Sakarawa people.

The population of Sakarava is not the largest, but the land occupies one-third of the entire island.

Decades ago, the Sakarawa people established a country in the southwest, named Malagasy Kingdom. But the country has collapsed, split into two major allied powers. Under the two major forces, there are many small tribes.

After living on this island for two months, everyone felt that there was no hope of returning home, and they married local aboriginal women one after another.

They hauled in three of the ship's guns, all of the smallest caliber. The ones with larger calibers can't be moved at all, so they can only be left on the seashore to be exposed to the wind and sun.

Li Luosheng, the incense owner, became a busy man. He moved the Mazu shrine to the village, and all the married people asked him to preside over the ceremony. Those brown-skinned indigenous women followed the heaven and earth in a muddleheaded way. They only knew that they were going to marry, but they didn't know the meaning of such worship.

After another three months, the two sides continued to communicate and integrate, and learned some daily expressions from each other, but they still didn't know how to express more complicated content.

One day, the surviving indigenous man approached Deng Youzhang to talk about the matter.

The young man's name is Ka Luo, he is about 1.6 meters tall: "Deng, let's go..."

"Where are you going?" Deng Youzhang asked.

Ka Luo pointed to Deng Youzhang's room. He entered the room, picked up one and put it down, picked up another and put it down again: "Take it, let's go!"

Seeing that Deng Youzhang still didn't understand, Ka Luo became more and more anxious, pointing to the distance and saying, "Go, over there."

Deng Youzhang took steps in that direction, but Ka Luo held him back. Go back to the house, pick up the things, and say: "Take, let's go, over there."

It's not clear at all, no matter whether you use Chinese or the local dialect here, you can't communicate this important information-migration!

The terrain here is a plateau, and above the plateau, there are many plains, hills and valleys. The aborigines are semi-nomadic and semi-farming, and they only live in one place for one or two years.

They would move to fertile river valleys, burn wasteland and cultivate land, and take their cattle and sheep to graze nearby grasslands. In one or two years, or two or three years, the soil fertility will not be enough, and it is necessary to go to the next valley to burn wasteland.

The natives packed up their things one after another, preparing for a migration.

The wife wanted to move out of nowhere, but the Chinese husbands of course refused, and almost every household was quarreling in a muddle.

There are only about 20 surviving adult male aborigines. They can't survive Chinese men. This tribe is already in the hands of the Chinese.

A navy soldier from Guangdong grabbed the soil from the field, found Deng Youzhang and said: "The local people don't know how to accumulate manure, and the soil fertility is getting worse every year. This is similar to the Guoshan Yao in Guangdong. They change places every two or three years, and then start again. Burn wasteland and cultivate land. They must be taught to accumulate manure, and the field must be leveled. What do you mean by stones everywhere in the field?"

"I understand." Deng Youzhang nodded.

In Madagascar, which is a little bigger, some tribes have already built terraces, while others are still slash-and-burn.

This river valley, in Deng Youzhang's opinion, is not bad, and after the migration, he still has to work hard to open up wasteland.

He gathered all the Chinese people, and after assigning tasks, they went home and brought out their wives. Some people not only married wives, but even had cheap children.

The Chinese took the lead in clearing the stones in the fields, and the aborigines followed suit in a daze. In fact, they have been tidying the fields for a long time, but there is no such large-scale collective labor. Even the excrement of cattle and sheep in the grassland was picked up and piled up one after another.

Large and small broken stones were picked up from the fields and piled up in the village.

These broken stones can be used to build walls.

The messy land was tidied piece by piece, and Deng Youzhang even redistributed the land. After regularizing the land, the retting manure was sprinkled on the land to increase its fertility, mixed with a lot of plant ash.

After more than a month of tossing like this, they organized to dig aqueducts.

The amount of engineering is not large, mainly because the indigenous people do not know how to do it. There is not even a wooden barrel for carrying water, and all the water is fetched in clay pots. The rice is also grown upland rice, and the yield of rice is much lower than that of rice.

In fact, it is not suitable for growing rice here because the annual precipitation is relatively small.

The further north the worse, the proper savannah climate, the environment forced the aboriginals to nomadic.

But Deng Youzhang and the others were lucky. This is the border zone between the tropical grassland climate and the tropical plateau climate. The reason why the Sakarawa people established their country in the south is because the further south they go, the more suitable for settlement and farming. The most suitable place for farming is the plateau area in the middle of the island, where there was a Kingdom of Merina, which later ruled the entire island.

In the first year when I came to Madagascar, I was basically engaged in infrastructure construction.

The land in the valley was leveled out and fertilized continuously for cultivation. Two diversion canals were also built, the dry fields were transformed into paddy fields, and even the rice seeds were changed. A small number of rice that has not been soaked in seawater was moved here for breeding, and the indigenous garbage rice seeds were no longer used.

The Chinese were pleasantly surprised to find that there is no cold winter here, and as long as the rivers don't dry up, rice can be planted all the time, with two or three crops a year.

There are also cultural people who have graduated from elementary school on board, and they have been recording the date.

But the Chinese calendar doesn't work here, and the weather is still not cold after Chinese New Year. Of course, it is not very hot, the temperature is between 14 and 32 degrees throughout the year.

They also found that there is a distinct rainy season. The rainy season lasts for four months, and the rainfall has increased significantly, and it does not rain all day long. Not only does it not affect agricultural production, but it is also conducive to grain irrigation.

The local aborigines plant seedlings in the rainy season. There is neither breeding nor transplanting, sow the rice seeds and wait for the rain to grow, and the rice can be harvested after the rainy season is over.

As for the months with less rain, the aborigines did not plant rice and instead planted cassava and other crops, wasting two-thirds of their time.

The years on the island are fleeting, and a year passes quickly.

No one has any hope of returning to China, and all marry local women. Those who are confident in their physical strength and capable of supporting their families even marry two wives and raise the children brought by their wives. Even those Persian slaves were given wives.

"Today is the day we come to the island for a year!"

Deng Youzhang called a meeting for all the members, and the indigenous people also came to join in the fun, looking at them cheerfully.

Deng Youzhang said: "Some people make their wives pregnant, and they will give birth in two months... Oh, don't laugh! Marrying a wife and having children is a matter of course. Here, there are 182 men over the age of twelve. There are 247 women. There are no rules, but before the rules are established, the identities must be arranged. Thanks to the love of all brothers, I, Deng, proclaimed myself the governor, in charge of all affairs here."

"I will appoint Brother He Wenpeng to be the commander-in-chief here, responsible for training and commanding the army. I will appoint Brother Li Luosheng to be the chief steward here. Our village will be officially named Datong Village, and we will call it Datong City when we grow up!"

"After the establishment of the system, taxes will be collected, and grain will be collected according to the size of the field. As for cattle and sheep, they will be collected according to the number of livestock. The tax collected is not mine, nor is it an official. We will build warehouses, and we will fight in the future. Water conservancy, or disaster relief, will be spent from the warehouse! Everyone will keep an eye on it, and anyone who dares to be greedy for public food will throw it into the sea to feed the fish..."

After some speeches, everyone applauded and cheered, mainly because the rice had just been harvested, and the food was very abundant.

The natives are also completely convinced. Although they don't understand the behavior of outsiders, the food production has indeed increased. They regard outsiders as sent by the gods, and even actively learn to speak Chinese, thinking that Chinese is a language of gods.

Then came the celebrations, first worshiping Mazu, and then facing east to worship the emperor.

The natives already know that Mazu is a great god and the emperor is the son of the sky.

After tossing until evening, each went home to rest.

Deng Youzhang married two wives, one in his twenties, with two cheap children, and now he is four months pregnant again. One was in her teens, the daughter of the dead patriarch, except for her darker complexion, she was also considered a little beauty.

Anyway, there are more women than men, as long as the woman agrees, she can take concubines casually.

The task of the men, apart from labor and training, is to quickly create a man. Their number is too small, so they can develop and grow here by having more offspring.

A few days later, the expedition returned.

Team leader Guo Tong said: "Going to the north, about 12 days away, there is an indigenous tribe. We investigated last year and found no human settlements. They should have migrated in the past six months. Their farming is very bad, but the number of cattle and sheep There are a lot of cattle and sheep on the grassland."

"Is there a horse?" Deng Youzhang asked.

Guo Tong shook his head: "There are no horses, only cattle and sheep. This tribe is very aggressive, and they charged us with spears when they saw us. I was afraid of accidents, so I brought people back. By the way, I also observed secretly. There are slaves in the tribe. Whether it is grazing or farming, a lot of slaves are used.”

"Grazing, keeping slaves, and migrating are similar to the Mongols, but they don't have war horses," Deng Youzhang said. "This kind of tribe cannot be allowed to grow and grow. You have to lead troops to fight a battle. Their slaves are rescued and compiled." Every household is the people. Robbing some more women and children will increase our population.”

Deng Youzhang's adaptability is very strong, and he has completely changed his thinking. Many rules of the Datong Army are no longer acceptable.

The entire island of Madagascar is in a primitive society and a slave society. The more powerful the tribe or country, the more slaves there will be.

For example, the Kingdom of Merina in the central plateau is currently the most powerful force on the island, adopting a three-level social structure of nobles, commoners, and slaves.

Deng Youzhang did not intend to raise slaves, but plundering the population was necessary. Especially in the northern grassland area, where there is not much food to grow, the tribes there will invade instead. Then take the initiative to go out, reduce the enemy's population, and increase your own population.

On the 382nd day after arriving in Madagascar, Deng Youzhang led a hundred troops to the expedition, taking the first step of their expansion.