"God, has Yang Qian ever seen such a big python?"

Yang Dao looked at the wounded soldiers around him, they all shot at the giant python in a panic, and because it was a scattered bullet, it caused a stray bullet to injure his own people.

It's not that there is a lack of training, it's just that this python is too amazing.

Yang Dao shook his head and said: "A few years ago, I heard that the southwestern soldiers had encountered a five-zhang long python in Bago (Burma), and I thought it was a rumor, but I never thought that I would encounter one today. ”

One of the generals said with a smile: "In the Beijing Zoo, there is also a giant python, which is more than half smaller than this one. It's a pity that Fang panicked too much and killed the giant python. ”

Yang Dao shook his head and said: "This place is fifty or sixty thousand miles away from the Ming Dynasty, and it is inconvenient to ship, if you do evil on the ship, it will cause huge losses, so don't mention this matter again." If they encounter such a big snake again, they will be killed as usual, but the snake skin and snake bones can be dried and shipped back. ”

Huang Yu, the governor of the General Administration Department who was in charge of recording the animals, recorded the characteristics of the big snake in detail and came over with a smile. "Mr. Yang Qian, I'm afraid that this big snake weighs two thousand catties, and if we cook it, we can eat a pound of fresh snake meat alone."

Yang Dao grew up in the mountains of Jiangxi Province when he was a child, and it was not taboo to eat snakes in the local area. So he also said without any psychological obstacles: "Well, with a meal in the afternoon, this snake meat must be extremely tender." ”

But some soldiers from the north were frightened when they heard that they were going to eat snake meat. Xu Chong, the general manager who followed Yang Dao, was from Hebei, and hurriedly said: "My subordinates don't have such a blessing, so let's give this kind of food to President Yang Qian." ”

Yang Dao looked at the natives who had fled in all directions and said, "You go and gather the natives and appease the people." In addition, snakes generally live in groups, and there should be more than one snake here, so please be cautious and not make the same mistake again. ”

Xu Chong also knew that the performance of the talented soldiers was very substandard, and they shot in a circle, but the snake only slightly injured four people, and they shot in a hurry, but their own people injured more than 20 people.

This is also the reason why their naval non-commissioned officers rarely experience war, but this is definitely not an excuse. After returning to the fleet, these people will definitely be punished.

The head of the internal prison followed Jia Chuan to the side of the giant python cautiously at this time, and turned back in amazement and said: "Mr. Yang Qian, now the natives think that this peat mine is guarded by a snake god, and they refuse to come to dig coal again no matter what. ”

Yang Daochang took a breath and slowly exhaled it. "With some patience and dissuasion, we can increase some of the chips appropriately. If you don't comply, you will be forced by force! Let's see if the snake god is powerful, or if my Ming musket is powerful. ”

Yang Dao is not a ruthless person, but the leading education he received told him that as a commander, Ci is not in charge of the army.

Leading the army is like a game, it is impossible to lose a son, and it is the right way to win the greatest result with the smallest loss.

In order to achieve the goal, move forward courageously and do not hesitate.

The 5,000 of them have arrived in the northern part of the southern continent of Dongzhou, some of them have to survey the terrain, some of them have to garrison the port, and if they want to transport millions of catties of peat to a ship more than 100 miles away, they must rely on the strength of the local natives.

Just relying on them, I'm afraid it will be difficult to complete the transfer in two months.

Jia Chuan sighed and said, "Let's try it again and see who has the most objections, and I can't say that I want to kill chickens and monkeys." ”

However, what they did not expect was that the appearance of muskets shocked all the natives. They used muskets as weapons of the gods, and they originally suspected that the Ming people were gods, but because the Ming people were entangled with their women for a few days, they lost their awe.

Now when this musket comes out, everyone is afraid. When the muskets of the Ming were pointed at them, everyone surrendered.

This musket, which can emit white smoke and make loud noises, scares them more than the snake god.

In addition to these 500 people who are responsible for pulling the plate truck to transport peat, they can pull 50,000 catties at a time, but it takes four days, and if you want to make up 3 million catties of peat, it will take more than half a year.

Of course, Yang Dao didn't have so much time to delay, so he took out more glass bead necklaces and asked the natives to send more people to help the Ming people transport peat.

They don't have wheels, but they make a kind of towing trailer out of round trees. Although this kind of trailer is not as easy to use as a board truck, it is laborious and time-consuming, and the requirements for the road surface are also higher, and it is also easy to be damaged.

However, there are a lot of them, not to mention the Ming people who bother to make board cars.

Jia Chuan used cloth, glass beads, and iron tools to attract more and more people from nearby tribal leaders. When the number of people reaches 20,000, it will take less than 20 days to transport the peat needed to a ship by the sea.

At this time, Yang Dao and the others relaxed and enjoyed the peculiar customs of South America.

The area where they live is the later Colombian Caribbean, and the people who live here are the Tayronas.

Although they do not have any cultural imagination with the Chibucha people, the main ethnic group in Colombia, their skin color is the same as that of the Ming people, and they are all pure yellow people.

As for the color variation of the Indians in later generations, it is mainly because most of the Indians have their blood mixed with the blood of blacks and whites, and the pure Indians are less than two percent of the population.

Therefore, in later generations, most of the Indians we saw were not the same as the yellow race, and this was only because they were no longer a pure people.

But in this era, there is no obvious difference between the natives here and the Ming people, it is nothing more than a difference in dress, and then because of the hot weather, they are tanned a lot because they don't wear clothes.

Such different ethnic groups, because of their similar appearances, are not at all difficult to integrate.

"The natives here call themselves the Tayronas, and they build stone houses, stone tombs, stone bridges and stepped stone platforms; They also make pottery, stoneware, animal bones and shell ornaments, as well as prayer beads, buttons, and jewelry.

In agriculture, they do not grow much food, mainly maize, and live mainly by hunting and gathering. There are a variety of fruits and countless animals, and people can get endless food without having to work hard.

And their stone mill is almost exactly the same as that of the Ming Dynasty, which can crush corn and cook porridge in clay pots.

It's just that their steel smelting is very backward, and they will only throw iron ore into the fire and burn it, and then forge it to obtain iron tools of low purity.

The people here still mainly use bronze and gold weapons, and only these two metals can be burned with fire. ”

"March 16, fine. Today, the squad in charge of patrolling the mine found two giant pythons again, and this time, the mentally prepared soldiers were not afraid of the huge python, although there were only ten people, they took turns shooting and killed the two pythons.

One of the pythons is nearly thirteen meters long, and the other is also nearly ten meters, and I have never seen such a huge python in Daming.

Although the local natives revere the snake god, they prefer this kind of snake meat, and the two giant pythons are nearly 2,000 catties of meat, which are directly eaten by them. ”

"March 21, fine. Nowadays, more and more natives are rushing here, they all carry gold on their bodies, no need to trade, as long as we say we want gold, they are willing to take the initiative to give it.

When many of the chiefs of the tribes saw us, they fell on their knees and saluted us. In their hearts, we are God from heaven. Especially after seeing our big ship, countless natives are even willing to sacrifice their lives. ”

"March 25, cloudy. Today, a huge snake bone was dug out of that peat mine, and the length of this snake bone was even more than fifteen meters, and the bone had turned like stone.

I thought of the fossils that His Highness once said, and this should be it. So I asked the natives to collect the fossils, number them, and ship them. Ship these back to Daming, Your Highness should like it. ”

"March 28, fine. Today, I received news from Han Jin that the peat is enough.

And the trade between Jia Chuan and the natives has already been completed. We only had a small half of the fabric we carried, and some glass beads. This is to prepare for the rest of the trip, and then meet the natives to trade with them.

The natives were disappointed to know that we were leaving, and they wanted us to stay here for a long time.

We offered twenty young men to come with us on the boat, and they fought for the spot, and finally twenty large tribes, each of which sent a able-bodied young man to join us.

We will teach them how to speak, and when we come here in the future, we will not be afraid that we will not be able to communicate with them. ”

"April 2nd, fine. The fleet departed, and the natives who came on board the new ships were the same as the natives who started them, they were industrious, they could endure hardships, and they did not complain about whatever they were arranged.

Jia Chuan arranged a showman to teach them to speak Da Ming, and they were all willing to learn. From their eyes, it can be seen that they are full of yearning for Daming.

Jia Changsui has been very happy recently, and he exchanged less than ten catties of gold for goods that cost four thousand catties of gold. This is really a huge profit! ”

When they set sail north along the western side of the Caribbean Sea and arrive at the territory of Panama, they were pleasantly surprised by the positioning of the test.

Whether looking at the map or according to the actual measurement results, it is proved that this place is less than 150 miles away from the port where they were stationed more than half a year ago.

If you can dig a canal here to connect the two oceans, you can save tens of thousands of miles of travel in the future.

But he also knew that it would be an almost impossible task to dig a canal with the help of the natives.

This matter needs to be considered in the long term.

Just when Yang Dao and Jia Chuan were secretly happy because of their harvest, Hou Xian, who was far away in Cusco, felt panicked because of the huge gain.

The Kingdom of Cusco, located on the Peruvian plateau, has dominated the region for more than 100 years.

For more than 100 years, the Kingdom of Cusco fought in the north and south and became a hegemon. And the area they occupy is also one of the largest gold reserves in the world.

From Peru to Chile to Bolivia, this is the world's largest and densest belt of metal minerals.

Suffice it to say that any mountain here is dug up, and there is either gold or silver in it, or there is brass in it, and it is nothing more than a question of how much there is in reserve.

The Kingdom of Cusco, which occupied this place, was punished by Hou Xian because it wanted to fight against the Ming Dynasty at the beginning.

He didn't want to kill Veracocha, the arrogant king who sat back and watched the sky, and when faced with the muskets of the Ming Dynasty, he had no will to resist at all.

The humility he showed was even more than that of the Pudio and Ventila.

The Ming Dynasty is here, and there is no need to use force at all.

They have the same skin color, the same appearance, and a more advanced civilization. When the closed South American Indians saw the Ming people, they had no sense of resistance at all.

As a punishment, Hou Xian casually said that he wanted them to contribute all the gold and silver. Then, millions of tribes of the Cusco people from all over the country contributed their gold.

They made the trek to the city of Cusco, where they placed their gold in the square in the center of the city.

And as long as Hou Xian behaves kindly to them, and then rewards them with soft silk, they will be excited.

By the time three months had passed, the gold in the middle of the square had piled up like a hill.

Wu Xun, the young eunuch who was in charge of guarding the square and counting the gold, had gradually become numb from the initial shock, and finally became panicked.

Because there is so much gold and silver, much more than they expected.

According to preliminary statistics, there are more than 50,000 catties of gold and 300,000 catties of silver. The total amount exceeded 10 million taels of silver.

The people here are very poor, they have no luxuries except for basic living security, and even the monarch only wears coarse linen clothes.

But they are so wealthy, sitting on countless mines. It's just that they lack the means to turn this gold and silver into material wealth.

During this time, Hou Xian met with the leaders of various tribes and signed various agreements with them to turn these areas into the territory of the Ming Dynasty. The rest of the time, I was thinking about how to establish a trade channel.

As an internal supervisor, he knows very well that Zhu Zhanji's current goal is to establish trade routes between the Ming Dynasty and other countries in the world, with North Korea, Dongying, Nanyang, and the West.

If this trade route is established, it will far surpass the Silk Road with the northwest.

In the past, this may have been a dream, but when the Ming Dynasty already had steam sailboats, it became much easier to establish such a trade route.

Now, the busiest of all is the craftsmen of the fleet.

While instructing the locals in making wooden boxes, they also instructed them in making board carts. It would take hundreds of carts to transport the gold and silver to the seashore, as well as the baggage and food of the army, and at least a thousand carts.

A large number of soldiers were also sent out, surveying the terrain, prospecting for minerals, and instructing local farmers to farm and build roads.

All the soldiers are full of energy, this place is full of gold, it really makes people not want to leave!

(Today is Valentine's Day, I wish you all a happy Valentine's Day.) ）