Chapter 184 Our peat has a wide range of uses

When he rode his horse to the entrance of the Carthaginian capital village, a villager immediately came over to take the horse.

The Carthaginian capital was about fifty or sixty meters long and wide, and had a large population of three hundred people.

The entire royal capital was made up of about seventy or eighty thatched houses and a crooked fence wall around it.

The only one who had a two-story wooden palace was the Queen of Carthage, but she was not there today.

She went fishing on an ocean-going fishing boat. Although she was the queen, fishing was the most important production task of the entire Carthaginian Kingdom at that time.

Otherwise, when the weather gets cold, these fish will run to the deeper lakes in Nanze and will be difficult to catch.

The queen would ride a boat to pull a net to catch fish, and patrol the waters to prevent other kingdoms from crossing the border. Sometimes she would even engage in boarding battles with the queens of other kingdoms who had crossed the border, and engage in verbal and physical battles.

However, few people dared to mess with the Queen of Carthage. First, her family was indeed prosperous, and second, this woman was very dirty with her hands and mouth.

When walking from the entrance of Wangdu Village to the Royal Pier, one would see a dozen beastmen, young and old, standing and watching. Those being watched were Pasrick and others who were performing an alchemy ritual.

Horn walked through these beastmen and came closer, then he saw a square pit on the ground.

The pit was about one yard deep, one yard long and one yard wide, with wooden boards inserted on the sides and the bottom.

"This is to prevent the alchemical reaction from escaping, resulting in only the shallow swamp soil being distilled into peat." The young man at the side explained to Horn.

Horn recognized the big-headed young man in front of him. He was actually the head of the White Mountain Priory in Jeanne d'Arc. His name was Robert.

Unlike others of lower status, he was a wealthy workshop owner who made dyes during the day and used scraps to make alchemical products at night.

After shaking hands and nodding with the young man, Horn walked forward and observed him carefully.

Six alchemists of the Holy Order, three ordinary alchemists, and Pasrick each held a walnut tree, held it in front of their chest, perpendicular to their elbows, and their entire bodies looked like a large cross.

The saints and Pasrick had no expression on their faces, while the ordinary alchemists looked reluctant, with beads of sweat on their foreheads, and their steps as they walked around the deep pit were a little unsteady.

As they walked, they moved in a dance-like pace, swaying in unison from side to side, muttering to themselves and making strange, low “ah-ah-ah-ah” noises.

Dragging walnut wood and walking around the deep pit in front of them, these alchemists' eyes glowed faintly, which was the external manifestation of meditating on the Tarot imagery.

But if you get closer to them, you will find that the soil in the deep pit begins to emit a faint steam, and the air above the deep pit is actually slightly distorted.

In the white steam, black mud seeped out little by little and slowly covered the surface.

The two beastmen held shovels and shoveled out the black peat in the deep pit from time to time, and then used rakes to turn over the swamp soil to expose the underlying swamp soil until no more peat was generated.

Horn lifted the peat shovel by shovel into rattan baskets. It was very difficult. Each basket weighed about 80 pounds.

When the alchemical ceremony was over, ten wicker baskets filled with peat were lined up in the open space.

Bending down, Horn got closer to the black peat. He reached out and touched it, and it actually felt a little warm.

With a little force from his fingers, a hole was actually pressed out in the peat.

Robert walked forward and said with a smile: "Normal peat is like this when it first comes out. It can be used after being left for a while or dried."

"Actually, there's no need to dry it." After finishing the alchemy ritual, Pasrick walked over to Horn. "It's just harder to light the fire, and the smoke is bigger."

"Can you demonstrate the effect of ignition?" Horn asked Pasrick. Pasrick stepped aside. The Salvation Army soldiers nearby had already built a small stove with stones and laid a layer of reed hay at the bottom of the stove to start the fire.

He scooped up a shovel of peat and poured it into the stove, then used the tinder to light the reed hay at the bottom. Soon, blue flames shot up from the bottom of the stone stove.

Pasrick put his finger into the fire and tested it, then put it back to the bottom and licked it: "Yes, the swamp soil here is of good quality and burns much better than firewood."

Ignoring Pasrick's abstract behavior, Horn waved to the excited Carthaginian envoy and asked him to get a flat-bottomed earthenware pot specially used for boiling salt, poured in the brine prepared in advance, and placed it on the stone stove.

After a while, a light layer of salt crystals condensed on the surface of the inner wall of the pottery pot.

"2000 pounds of swamp soil requires about ten alchemists to participate in the alchemical ceremony." Standing next to Horn, Pasrick pointed at the peat in the wicker baskets and said, "800 to 1200 pounds of peat can be refined, and it takes about a quarter of an hour."

Pasrick glanced at the ordinary alchemists slumped on the ground. "If it's an ordinary alchemist, making 300 to 500 pounds of swamp soil, it will probably take half a day to rest. For the Saintly Favored, two to three hours of rest time is enough, and they can even work continuously."

"What if you want to extract 100 pounds of salt?"

"About seven or eight baskets of peat. This peat is much faster than boiling salt with firewood." The Carthaginian king's hand, who was watching, was obviously very familiar with boiling salt. After a rough estimate, he gave this number based on his own experience, "It takes about three hours to boil once."

Based on 5 grams of salt per person per day, minus the salt Horn brings with him, there is still a one-month gap, which is about 25000 pounds of salt for 7500 people.

The salted fish prepared for 4000 soldiers, based on three ounces (90 grams) of fish per person per day, would be 32400 pounds of salted fish in three months, and the required catch would be about 50000 pounds.

The ratio of salt fish to salt is ten to one, which is 5000 pounds of salt. All in all, it is 12500 pounds of salt. The fuel needed to cook this salt is 75000 pounds of peat.

With this calculation, under ideal circumstances, ten alchemists spending 19 working hours can meet the fuel needs of more than Salvation Army soldiers for salt, and the cost is almost zero.

The only thing worth considering is whether their brine extraction rate can keep up with the peat production rate.

Assuming a population of 400 million in the Valley of the Thousand Rivers, the basic demand for salt is approximately 120 million pounds per month, and the basic demand for peat is 720 million pounds per month.

Then Horn only needs to mobilize 200 alchemists and 90 working hours to meet the fuel demand for salt boiling in the Thousand River Valley.

You know, it's not just boiling salt that requires fuel. Pottery making, brewing, dyeing, printing and dyeing, baking, textiles, etc., the market demand is astonishingly large.

Even wet-forged iron requires fuel to heat the medicine tank!
However, this is only under ideal circumstances, as transportation costs, a series of losses and even tariffs are not taken into account.

But the production efficiency of this alchemical ritual was beyond Horn's imagination. The only problem was probably the raw materials.

You know, the empire may lack everything except swamps.

But just in case, the environmentalist Horn asked Pasrick: "Can this peat be regenerated? How long will it take?"

"It will be very quick, maybe a few decades. If there is a specialized wizard to catalyze it, a dozen years will be enough."

Pasrick looked at Horn in some confusion. How did this guy know that peat could be reborn?

Horn immediately determined that this thing was probably similar to sulfur, a kind of isotope with the same name in different time and space. Although the functions were similar, their essences were completely different.

"This solves the fuel problem," Horn said to himself, looking at the frying pan licked by the flames. "The only problem left is fishing and brine."

While thinking about these things, Horn suddenly heard a noisy sound coming from not far away. He immediately realized that it must be Haliba returning with the barbarian captives.

(End of this chapter)