June 11, 1648, is a day that history will remember.

The sky was sunny, which made it a little hot for the heavily armed East Coasters. However, the sea breeze on the periphery of this island in the southeast trade wind belt is not small, which makes everyone finally feel less uncomfortable. Directly opposite the boat is a large circle of coral reefs that loom and intermittently separated, and the reefs are a little distance from the shoreline, so that a circular lagoon is formed between these reefs and the shoreline.

The hydrological situation in the lagoon was unknown, so they did not dare to rush into the "Exploration". The ship now has a draft of nearly 4 meters, and no one dares to sail into this section of the lagoon without measuring the depth of the water and marking the course.

Three small boats were lowered on the big ship, and the 34 expedition members led by Zhang Jinhua (2 of whom were stranded in Australia due to illness) were divided into two boats. Among them are from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Communications, and the Ministry of the Admiralty, and there are not many combatants, only about one-third, and the rest are investigators. In addition, Second Lieutenant Givens ordered his first mate, a Pirate-turned-Englishman from the Caribbean, to accompany the expedition ashore in a dinghy with 15 heavily armed sailors to keep them safe.

The sailors raised the soft sails on the dinghy, and the ship immediately drifted forward slowly under the blowing of the southeast trade winds. They paddled cautiously with their wooden oars, constantly adjusting their direction, and finally sailed into the lagoon. The water in the lagoon is as bright as a mirror, and when the sun shines on it, it can brighten the eyes of a blind person. The water is also very transparent, and you can even see some fish swimming near the reef underwater.

"That's bonito! A fish with great economic value. There are not many of these fish in La Plata, but they sell for a very high price. If you're interested, you can come here for the night fishing, but I don't guarantee you'll catch it. In general, it's not a concentration of bonito, or rather, there are very few fish here, so I thought you might as well focus on finding some black pearls, which are the specialty of Tahiti. Zhang Jinhua glanced at a young man who was staring intently at the bottom of the sea and said.

The young man's name was Liu Fubo, and he was about fifteen or sixteen years old. He wears a navy summer short-sleeved regular dress. He is the eldest son of Navy Captain Liu Dafa. His mother, Adele, is a German-Swiss immigrant who currently works at the Dongfang County People's Hospital. Liu Fubo is a student at the Navigation School and has his final year of internship left, and this trip to Tahiti Island with the "Exploration" is his final assessment.

Liu Fubo smiled after hearing what Zhang Jinhua said. Eyes were drawn back from the sapphire-glowing seabed. Then he subconsciously grabbed the 41-year-old steel bayonet at his waist. He asked in a low voice, "Uncle Zhang, will there be a battle in a while?" ”

"Call me Captain Zhang!" Zhang Jinhua corrected the boy's address, and then explained: "Generally speaking, there will be no conflict. But I'm afraid of everything, I'm not allowed to take off my cuirass after going ashore, everyone is close together, let's salute first and then soldier. These natives have a very low level of civilization, worse than those Klandis, and perhaps they only use stone or wooden spears. ”

Hearing that these people were less civilized than the Klandians, the young man relieved himself, and then sat quietly on the side of the ship, looking at the shore that was getting closer and closer.

Soon, the three dinghys entered the shallow water, and the paddlers received the wooden oars to the boat, then jumped into the sea and pushed the dinghy up to the beach with the help of the wind in waist-deep water.

Zhang Jinhua also went ashore under the heavy protection of several fighters, and the soft beach at his feet and a large bush in front of him, occasionally interspersed with some coconut palms, surprised Zhang Jinhua. You must know that coconuts are native to the Malay region, and in the 17th century, there were not many places in the world where there were coconuts, and they were generally only in Southeast Asia; Madagascar also has large coconut groves, but they were brought by the Malays who drifted to Madagascar by the currents and monsoons between 600 and 1000 BC.

In addition, it is almost impossible to see this kind of thing in Africa or the Americas now, because it has not yet spread on a large scale. There are coconut trees on Tahiti, which may be enough to prove that the people here are close relatives of the people of the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, who brought the coconut trees to this small island in the middle of the ocean.

After the people on the three dinghys were gathered, Zhang Jinhua counted the number of people, and then announced to everyone: "Three things! The first is to set up a camp, which is standard for a temporary field camp, with stakes, barbed wire, fire ditches - well, this can be saved - everything is available; The second is the search for a source of clean fresh water, which is more urgent, because the brethren on the ship are also waiting for us. One last thing, Sergeant Brown, you have to take the technicians of the Department of Agriculture to inspect the nearby flora and fauna, be careful not to go too far, and shoot at the slightest sign of the problem, and try not to do it if you can. Okay, that's all, let's go our separate ways. ”

When everyone heard this, they began to get busy with their own affairs, Zhang Jinhua took a small horse and sat on the beach, lit a pipe for himself, and smoked comfortably. It's a gentle slope, not a good landing spot to be honest, and it's surrounded by verdant plants, Zhang Jinhua can only recognize coconut trees, and the others are common tropical species, but he doesn't recognize them at all.

After smoking for a while, the first few people who had gone out to find a source of water returned, and they found a small stream with clear water after a gentle slope. But they didn't dare to drink it, for fear of some parasitic infection, so they returned first to report it. Zhang Jinhua asked them to first wave the flag and ask Second Lieutenant Jiwen on the "Exploration" to send someone to go ashore to fetch water, and then continue to sit there and rest on the ground.

Everyone was very skilled in setting up the camp, first in groups of five or six to cut down small bushes of medium thickness, and then to start piling and pulling barbed wire. Considering that this is a tropical area, precipitation is relatively abundant, so the rain prevention and drainage functions cannot be left behind. In short, under the busy work of a group of people, a shallow camp finally took shape in the evening.

Experts from the Ministry of Agriculture who had gone out to inspect the flora and fauna also rushed back before the sun set, and judging by their expressions, it seemed that the sugar cane, which was most important to the people of the East Coast, had not yet been found. However, they found another gadget and presented it to Zhang Jinhua.

"Come on!" Zhang Jinhua took such a yellow fruit in his hand and said to himself with some surprise. He had heard it before he set out that it seemed to be the only triploid produced by natural reproduction in nature, with moderate sweetness and sourness, and its nutritional value far exceeded that of the Burmese species, and it was definitely the best among citrus fruits.

"Remember those places, and when we return to the sea, dig up more plants that seem to be growing well and bring them back, and go to Xinhuaxia Island to plant them in large quantities." Zhang Jinhua instructed several experts from the Ministry of Agriculture, "I will send someone to assist you when the time comes." Tahiti is such a blessed place, it seems that any kind of fruit grows here will make a wonderful difference, and I can't wait to find out where the sugar cane is. Everyone is tired today, so let's have a good night's rest, and tomorrow we will send a few more groups of people to explore the nearby place. ”

Dinner began half an hour later, with a soup of stone-hard jerky and pickles, and the main dish was dry pancakes. The officers were given an extra share of fresh fish, which the sailors had caught in the afternoon when they were measuring the depth of the channel, which whetted the appetite of those who were tired of canned food. After eating, the group began to clean up the camp and distribute the sentinels, and then after nine o'clock the whole camp fell into silence on time, and everyone slept peacefully in the mosquito-proof tent with the sound of the waves on the sea and the cool sea breeze blowing at night.

Nothing was said all night. On the second day, the expedition was restarted, and this time the exploration distance and scope of exploration will be larger. Two of the larger (fifteen or sixteen) and well-armed teams may camp outside, and they will march inland along this seaside plain, looking for native sugar cane and seeing if they can find the natives.

Zhang Jinhua sat in the camp as usual. At this time, all the 90 men on the "Exploration" had gone ashore except for a dozen or so who remained behind, and the camp was further strengthened, and they continued to send a considerable number of men to measure the depth of the water and mark the course inside and outside the lagoon. The days flew by in this comfortable atmosphere, and by the time clock had come to June 15, the two teams that had gone to the interior for exploration returned one after another. Thankfully, none of them have been attritional!

And not only has there been no attrition, but their number seems to have increased somewhat. Who are those brown-skinned people with flower covers on their heads, garlands around their necks, and some "clothes" woven from coconut leaves? The aborigines of the island? Well, it looks like they didn't show any ill will towards us, so a lot of things are much easier.

The returning expedition members were informed that they were indeed the natives of Tahiti, and that they had encountered the expedition of the people from the east coast in the wilderness, but both sides were restrained and showed no hostility. The aborigines who had lived on the island for thousands of years and the expedition members even exchanged gifts with each other, and the people on the east coast gave them glassware - although it was very vulgar, although people in the civilized world gave this thing, it has to be said that it was a very magical gift for primitive people; What the aborigines gave to the people on the east coast was a kind of tropical fruit, Zhang Jinhua looked at the few pieces of white flowers held by the expedition team members, and it was the Tahitian sugarcane that everyone had been looking for for a long time! (To be continued......)