Stories about merchants or cunning merchant 108 Unexpected find

The old quarters represented adobe houses of one and two floors. Clay bricks with straw, which were dried in the sun. Dried poplar trunks acted as a carcass for the house. In fact, the wooden frame was filled with bricks and then, clay with chopped straw and water, the structure was covered on top. It turned out like a facade plaster. When everything dried up, the facade clay plaster was whitewashed on top. Over time, the plaster crumbled, but it was updated again.

Entire blocks of such houses. With narrow streets. Outside the houses seemed ugly and gray, almost no windows went out onto the street. Gray or white walls. Narrow roads where two riders or one car could barely part.

There is no greenery, no water, only dust. But inside such houses there was a real garden, water flowed in a canal that passed through all the courtyards. In these channels, widths of 30-40 cm, fish and frogs swam. Amazing flowers and shrubs bloomed. Fruit trees, sometimes located fountains and small ponds.

Life is full of colors and happiness. And from the outside, the house was a fortress. Such was the way during the feudal period. Then this system fell, capitalism came for 50 years, which was again swept away by a new way of life. After decades of civil war, attempts at intervention, the second empire settled well in Small-An. The Principality barely received independence, for 5 years, again for a long 90 years it became a colony.

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the old city were in no hurry to leave their fortresses - palaces. So decades passed. But once, when the whole city was already covered with wide highways, shady gardens for all the townspeople and water canals. New high-rise buildings, a small corner of one of the parts of the old city, impeded the development of the city.

Part of the houses was demolished. On what the city hall and the leadership of Small-An, anonymous complaints poured. Nevertheless, the city was being built. For the place of demolished houses, residents were provided with free houses in new buildings. But this is another story of the socialist period.

Yes, to the surprise of everyone, the recently feudal principality of Small-An has become a socialist colony of the second empire.

The houses were demolished, the tractors failed. Builders crowded around the pit. She went deep down. Construction was suspended. They called specialists. They found two tractors at the bottom of a large opening. They sent them to the hospital. Severe fractures. One died on the way to the hospital. The second remained disabled for life.

Meanwhile, the builders gasped, the failure was actually a tunnel. With arches lined with bricks, with old bricks. 60 cm wide, 40 cm long and 8 cm long.

The bravest of the workers and builders decided to walk along the two ends of the collapsed tunnel.

Some went north, others south. The most interesting thing was that the torches did not go out, the tunnel had air ducts that functioned in the early 50-60s of the 20th century!

Those who went north went out in a basement, kicked out the old door and found themselves inside the courtyard of an ancient madrasah, which was built in the 16th century and then reconstructed in 17.

The distance from the place of failure to the exit point was 7 km! As they walked through the tunnel, they saw several more branches. A couple of old cabinets of the 18th century, collapsed Arba are such old carts with two wheels. Some peaks, shields, the remains of swords.

Several workers responded, but no one returned. Another group was sent for them, but she did not return. Then they called the firemen, they went with gas masks and returned five lifeless bodies. People died from a lack of oxygen. Those tunnels were already with non-working ducts. Three workers were saved.
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Those who went south went to the bottom of the old well, climbed the top by a stone staircase. We came to the surface near the old bazaar, the distance from the collapse was 12 km. The second branch led another group to the old cemetery and mosque built in the 15th century. The distance from the failure was 18 km.

The tunnel width was about 8 meters, height 4 meters. Several branches were visible along the tunnel. Workers walked through some of them, where they found old books, icons, boxes. A few coins - gold and silver.

After the moves were examined by archaeologists. Historical artifacts of 15-19 and early 20th centuries were found. Several scores of weapons from sabers, bows, shields, and spades, to revolvers, coils with bayonets of 1899 and 1910, several machine guns "Maxim" with boxes of rotten moisture cartridges.

Presumably about these tunnels, the police units of the first empire, which were subsequently used during the civil war, could know. As well as English intelligence officers from 1919 to 1930.

Since in the tunnel they found several books in English as well as the official uniform of the captain and major of the British army during the First World War.

Several treasures with coins of the 15th and 20th centuries. The total coins were about 70. Silver and gold. The total price at that time was in terms of dollars, about 90 thousand. As usual in socialism, the treasure was seized in state revenue.

The tunnels were blocked at first, then the cordon was removed in the morning and heavy trucks arrived at night, overnight, all the entrances were bricked and the openings were cemented.

So these tunnels disappeared, remained buried underground. Periodically, with continued construction, the equipment continued to fail here and there underground, but immediately, the rapid response team of the Ministry of State Security came. All passages were cemented. And then they refused to continue construction at all.

Time has passed, the second empire has collapsed or it has collapsed, but that's another story. Small-An, it seems, has become independent, although in reality it has more likely become a neo-colony.

Some remembered these tunnels, offering to find, restore and show them to foreign tourists for money. But support from the city government was not found.

At the same time, some desperate heads began to look for old maps of the late 19th century and look for passages to those tunnels.

In old parks, sometimes they managed to find wells covered with earth, at the bottom of which sometimes passages were seen somewhere deeper.

Treasure hunters, armed with oxygen tanks, powerful flashlights, and pickaxes, sought wealth.

Chapter end