Aztec Civilization: Destiny to Conquer America!-Chapter 1741 - 1244: The Most Delicious Fish

Jades are hidden by the water's edge, white eagles soar in the sea sky. Eight hundred miles north from the Black Serpent Tribe is the Kingdom's largest stronghold on the Western Sea Coast, West Mountain Port in the Golden Bay of Gold Mountain. After three years of development, this naturally excellent harbor has expanded from its initial two to three hundred people to a large town of 3,200 tribes in the bay!

Last summer, the second batch of the northern Kingdom fleet arrived in Golden Bay. This fleet of longships not only brought a new batch of priests, Samurai, and commoners, but also key craftsmen in pottery, brick-making, metal smelting, and shipbuilding, making the entire town prosper even more.

Looking around, a newly built small Main God Temple stands on the West Mountain at the mouth of the estuary, overlooking the long 500-mile Golden Bay. The expansion area of West Mountain Port has extended with the newly reclaimed large tracts of farmland, with the temple under the Main God's banner, from the winding eastern shore of Golden Bay to the narrow western shore at the foot of West Mountain.

West Mountain Port occupies both sides of Golden Bay, thus it is naturally divided into east and west towns. In the east town's Golden Bay shipyard, eight longships have already been fitted with the most crucial continuous keel, building extended ship cabins and decks. More than ten Kingdom shipwrights, over two hundred Miwock apprentice craftsmen, and dozens of tribal carpenters and chieftain's descendants from North Bay Tribe were busily constructing the largest "large ship" ever built on the Western Sea Coast, by the framework of the longship.

In fact, these longships built independently on the Western Sea Coast are obviously smaller than those of the Kingdom's southern longships. They are about 16 meters long and 4.5 meters wide, able to accommodate 32 rowers, the same number of warriors, or 24 tons of cargo. Generally speaking, the size of these small longships is only 80% of the Kingdom's standard longship, yet they used excellent redwood materials. The reasons for building this size are partly due to the lack of craftsman masters and the scarcity of metal connectors.

The entire 500-mile-long Golden Bay area has already discovered over a dozen open-pit gold mines, even three genuine great gold mines, yet not a single trace of an open-pit copper mine is found, which is extremely absurd! The only nearby metal source for West Mountain Port is still a batch of iron materials newly transported here this year after the Lake Bay Port in the North smelted iron. With this stable iron materials source, the next batch of longships can be constructed to the Kingdom's standard size, even larger...

Outside the sea mouth of Golden Bay, four newly built small longships, three old, large longships, plus dozens to hundreds of canoes are bustling back and forth. A quarter of West Mountain Port's population is engaged in the spring fish run, casting nets in the fish-filled bay. Seeing one net after another haul in big fish, tribespeople often exclaim in excitement.

"Praise the Chief Divine! Praise the Great Divine Spirit of the sea for letting us catch so many fish!..."

"Ah! Look! It's the long-touted big-eyed fish, the hardest to catch! It's been forced out of the lake by the fish shoal, quick! Quick, cast the net!..."

"Great! We caught it! This is the best-tasting fish and must be offered to the Chief God Priests who are blessed with divine power, bringing harvest and large ships!..."

The "big-eyed fish" mentioned by the Miwock tribespeople is the famous walleye, a fresh, almost odorless freshwater fish of later generations. Although mainly distributed in the Great Lake Region, they do scatter in California, but are extremely hard to catch...

Soon, small canoes laden with fish are paddled toward the Kingdom Port in the east. Hundreds of tribal women and children are prepared, setting up rows of fish racks on the shore to dry the fish, then using thousands of pounds of lake salt from the south to energetically salt cure the fish. Once the spring fish season is over, tons of salted fish will be stored in the "Big Fish Warehouse" on the east bank, making the whole West Mountain Port east town filled with the "pleasant" smell of salted fish. It is hard to say whether there is any unspeakable relation between the urgent establishment of divine temples on West Mountain for the priests and the "Big Fish Warehouse" in the east town by the Chief God Priests...

However, whenever the tribespeople working the fields smell this wonderful salty smell symbolizing food abundance, they all show a relieved, delighted, and even enamored simple smile. Because, ever since the storage of large fish warehouse, the tribe finally has real peace of mind. With surplus grain in hand, the tribe no longer fears famine!

As for the continuous new fields being cultivated on both sides of the shore, although considerable manpower is invested, the harvest is nowhere near as much as on the Mexican Plateau. The maize fields by the river will take at least several years to gradually become high-yielding matured land, and the current yield is all prioritized for the Samurai and warriors. Meanwhile, the potatoes, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes planted mountainside do not fussy about land or water and can have a decent yield even on newly cultivated drylands, being the most important subsistence grain for the tribespeople...

The smell of salted fish wafts from the fish warehouse, some salted fish stored for over a year are just taken out and transported to the small island at the center of Golden Bay, which serves as a "market" for Miwock tribes to trade. Before the Kingdom arrived at West Mountain Port, due to highly limited production, inter-tribal trading was rare. But after the establishment of West Mountain Port by the Kingdom, the advanced productivity, transport tools' salt-iron, and three introduced grain crops have significantly changed the current situation of the Golden Bay tribes!

Especially the Cedar Shaman's North Bay Tribe of Miwock, occupying the best soil and water of Napa Valley, has grown to over eight thousand tribespeople after planting the introduced three grain crops! Such a large Northern tribe with a Shaman, among the tens of thousands of Miwock Tribes around Golden Bay, is undoubtedly the "Leader of the Tribes"!

However, at the beginning of the year, when the trusted disciple of the Cedar Shaman rushed back to North Bay Tribe with the shaman's sightings in the Kingdom of the Lake... The "strong" North Bay Tribe, having over a thousand warriors, also eventually realized the true power of the Kingdom of the Lake's tens of thousands of troops, understanding the Kingdom's "true strength"!... Thereafter, following two months of continuous debate, at the beginning of the month, the North Bay Tribe Council of Elders formally passed a resolution announcing the conversion of the entire tribe to the Chief Divine, joining the embrace of the "Supreme Great Divine Spirit"!

At that moment, in the North Bay Tribe, the temple of the Chief Divine began new construction. The Kingdom's Preaching Priest was also invited to settle in Napa Valley. Under the influence of the North Bay Tribe, tribes numbering tens of thousands throughout Golden Bay began to worship the Chief Divine, sending chieftain's children to West Mountain Town for learning, and voluntarily moving closer to the faith of the "Great Divine Spirits".

As for the old salted fish currently being transported to the small island "market", they are meant for trading with various Miwock Tribes, mainly those of the North Bay Tribe, for the pelts and bird feathers, herbs and minerals produced in the mountains, also attracting numerous small tribes with hundreds to migrate altogether into the Kingdom's ports. In substantiate, these salted fish with high salt content, cherished by the salt-deficient tribes as a commodity, in a way, seem more like a faith benefit the Kingdom grants the Miwock Tribes during proselytizing, as "eggs" distributed by the missionaries...

Given that it is distributing "eggs," there naturally needs to be a presence of the Main God's priest. Jia Shu, the Preaching Priest at West Mountain Port, sits in a large boat filled with salted fish, escorted by ten Kingdom's Warriors. He wears a fur ritual robe in Northern style, occasionally sniffing the air while his face remains full of devoted resolve. Seeing the envoys from over twenty mountain Miwock tribes, seeing those "pious" and longing smiles upon reaching the market island, his joy and excitement were evident, exalted by glee.

"Praise the Chief Divine, three more envoys of new tribes have arrived, additional schools of 'Chief Divine's fish' have come! With the conversion and allegiance of the North Bay Tribe, this vast land of Golden Bay is becoming a 'big fish pond' for the Chief Divine. In this fish pond, tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand Miwock Tribes, will surely fall into the Chief Divine's hands, becoming the freshest 'big-eyed fish'..."

"Chief Divine's blessing! Soon, the first big City-State on the Western Sea Coast will be established in our hands! And more temple towns will start from the North Bay Tribe, extending all the way eastward, spreading throughout the 500 miles of Golden Bay!... Haha! By that time, the wealthy Golden Bay on the Western Sea Coast will surpass the populous-deficient Reagan Town, becoming the actual political center in the Northern Land, even establishing a large Ecclesiastical Province, establishing a Council of Elders with Fourth Level Priests!..."

Note: The Easter Egg chapter is a map of Golden Bay.

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