"Uncle, are they particularly like those monkeys who steal wine and drink in Jinhewan?" Looking at every move under the mountain, Weng Ya suddenly asked in a low voice.

"Hey, hey, hey...... In fact, we used to be monkeys, of course. Hong Tao almost laughed out loud, but he didn't see that Weng Ya still had the talent to be a zoologist, and he solved the problem that Darwin had tossed all his life with one sentence.

"I'm not a monkey!" Weng Ya thought that Hong Tao was joking with her again, muttered a sentence in her mouth, and made a monkey expression at Hong Tao behind Hong Tao, which was very similar.

There was progress down the hill again, and Martini walked cautiously, and this time the two blacks did not react much, but handed the small jar of wine to Martini. Knowing this, Medini untied the copper wire that had been fixed on the cork, pulled the cork out, and took a sip of the jar himself before handing it back to the negro. Wine is also strange, people all over the world love to drink, especially the alcohol that is not too high and has a sweet taste, whether you have drunk it or not, it is generally not too repulsive to drink it for the first time. This jar contains a light rum made from sugar bagasse in Golden River Bay, which has not been distilled and filtered, and the degree is not too high.

The two negroes took turns taking a few sips, and a smile immediately appeared on their faces, and Martini understood and pulled out his snack from his purse. Fat people have a habit of carrying snacks wherever they go, both ancient and modern, both at home and abroad. Like Wen Nan, he has a leather satchel, which is a specialty of Jinhewan, and anyone can have it as long as they need it, but the style is different. Wen Nan's bag was always full of paper, notebooks, whalebone pens, black dye, glasses cases, razors and so on. Martini's bag is very pure, you flip it, there is a kind of inedible Hong Tao who dares to eat all the leather bags.

The more complex, advanced, and civilized the social structure, the smarter people are, in other words, the worse they are!

These two blacks were apparently still in a primitive state of society. They only judge the truth of things by the most primitive senses, and in the words of later generations, they are too honest and have too few twists and turns in their minds. You give them candy, and they think you're friendly, and you gesture at them with a stick. They think you're dangerous, it's as simple as that, and you don't have to move your brain.

When Martini took out all the snacks in his bag, there were not two blacks crouching in front of him, but five! The three blacks who had been hiding in the woods all came out, and as for whether the three men behind Medini were trying to harm them, and what the things those people were holding in their hands, these blacks were not interested in knowing at all. They just think that this big fat man is well-intentioned, and the person behind the fat man is with the fat man, so it should also be goodwill.

The problem is that kindness can sometimes be troublesome. Ten minutes later, the blacks had already regarded Martini as friends, and each of them, who had never drunk alcohol, had taken a few sips of rum, and they were a little upset, and they actually had close contact with Martini. They were so interested in the clothes he was wearing, the shield and the purse he was holding that they almost stripped him naked. Compared to them, the originally black and fat Martini is indeed a standard white man!

"Karl, you go down. Go down with the knife and give it to them. Get Mai out of here. Hong Tao had been watching the situation below from the mountain, and had not sent a signal to Langya, and when he saw that Medini had succeeded, he let Karl go down with a machete.

Hong Tao's judgment was accurate, when Karl used his machete to cut off a small tree that was slightly thinner than his arm, and then threw the knife to the ground. The five negroes all threw away their clothes, never looked at Martini again, and all went to grab the knife, and one of them even cut his palm, and screamed in pain. But a few other blacks didn't even care about their partners. Take turns using the knife to chop down the small branches around them, and let out bursts of cheers. The black man with the injured palm lost the opportunity to enjoy himself, so he could only find some grass leaves and other things on the ground, put them in his mouth and chewed them, and put them on the palm of his hand, which was very pitiful.

What happened next not only overwhelmed Carl and Martini, but even Hong Tao was stunned. When the five blacks were done, they put the machete back at Karl's feet, and then began to put down the strings of shells and bird feathers on their bodies, and put a small pile on the ground, pointing to the knife at Carl's feet, and then to the garbage heap on their side, with a very urgent expression.

"No, no, no...... Artifact! Click...... Exchange more, I don't want these! Karl didn't know what to do, but Martini was the first to react, and he rushed up shirtless, crouching between the knife and the pile of rags, shouting and gesturing, with great seriousness, and not afraid of the blacks piercing him with the javelins in their hands.

The blacks understood what Maitini meant, and understood that this magical weapon was certainly not cheap, and they had their own judgment on what was worth and what price it was, so the five javelins were put on the pile of rags, and the gesturing and shouting began again, and they wanted to exchange everything they had for the machete.

"Old Mai, give it to them, and then ask them how many machetes it will take to exchange this land from the sea to the land by their village." Hong Tao understood that the black man's javelin was made of wooden sticks and bones, and a steel machete was an artifact to them. In exchange for what? Americans once exchanged glass balls for land with Indians, so it should be very benevolent to exchange steel knives for land with blacks, right? I don't need anything else, and I don't need anything here, just land.

This time the negotiation work was more difficult, the black man insisted on the knife in vain, and neither side could express what he meant, Mainny had already begun to draw a map on the ground, and finally one of the five black men was smarter, he and his companion muttered a few words, and then turned back and ran back into the jungle.

"Send a signal to the Marines, don't stop him." Hong Tao probably knew what this black man was going to do, they were probably not the leaders of the village, at most they were scouts, and the people who could call the shots were probably behind, and he went back to report to the leader.

After another two hours, by the time a black man with a lot of shells around his neck returned to the foot of the mountain with a group of men, it had become an amusement park. Medini was playing a game of pitching pot and drinking with four black men, this thing was very easy to understand, and it was very popular, drawing a circle on the ground a few meters away, and throwing it into it with a black javelin, and whoever couldn't vote couldn't drink or eat meat, and had to eat and drink, and had to play, and everyone got along very happily.

Hong Tao still hasn't come down the mountain, what should he do He has already explained to Medini, even if he goes down, the effect is still the same, if you really talk about the kung fu of trading and grinding people, I am afraid that I am not as good as Martini, people are solidly practiced, I can see it, not a grade. Leave it to Medini to negotiate business with the black village chief or chief, and see how low he can get the price.

The negotiations were not as easy as Hong Tao had imagined, and it was not until sunset that the two sides reached a preliminary agreement to exchange five machetes, two harpoons, a jar of whale oil, and two candles for the plain between Table Mountain and Signal Mountain, to the east to the edge of the small black village. But this is not the end, starting tomorrow, Martini will follow this leader to the boundary stake, don't look at these blacks are still in a primitive tribal state, but they still attach great importance to the territorial boundaries. They used a kind of totem pole-like wood carving to represent the edge of the territory, since they arrived here, Hong Tao still did the local customs, he also asked the carpenter on the ship to start cutting down the trees on the seashore overnight, trimming them into wooden stakes, and carving a rat's head on it, and then other tribes came over, and when they saw this kind of wooden stake, they knew that there was a master here.

The land is only about ten kilometers in circumference, which is not as large as a corner of Cape Town in later years, but it just encompasses the port area and the tall forested area in the mountains, which is enough for now. In the future, Hong Tao believes that as long as he wants, those black tribes will be differentiated or disappear, but this is all a later story, what is needed now is to build the supply point first, not too big, a small village is enough, and the real construction will wait until the next time you come to bring all the craftsmen and materials before starting.

Who will stay and watch over the land? Carl was most happy, and he was willing to spend a year in this strange place in order to return home. But he couldn't leave, and he was left without an experienced captain, which was too much of a loss for Hong Tao. After a comprehensive comparison for a long time, Hong Tao could only let Martini take on this heavy responsibility. Now that the port of Kabalan has taken shape, he no longer uses him to communicate with his tribe, and more and more Arab merchant ships have taken the initiative to go to the port of Kabalan to do business with the maritime merchants of the Southern Song Dynasty. And he has no position in Golden River, and he has talked to the black chief here for several days, so he should be the most suitable person.

"Lao Mai, you can refuse this matter, I don't force you. To be honest, it's dangerous to stay here, those black tribes are very unstable, maybe they will be wiped out by other tribes next month, and you only have more than 20 people here, and you don't have any advantage in their jungle, and it's so far away from Jinhe Bay, you don't have a chance to ask for help. But this thing is just like doing business, it's risky and profitable, and if you can make it until next year when I bring someone back, I'll make you the governor of here, the kind of leader I told you about running a big city. Don't look at the fact that this place is still deserted, and in a few years, I will be able to build this place into a good village. In a few years, there will be a large number of Southern Song Dynasty maritime merchants here, and this is the only way to go to Carl's house. Hong Tao did not force Medini to stay, he gave the black fat man a choice, either to stay by his side and continue to be a slave, or to become a future city administrator. (To be continued.) )