"It was a lucky moment to have discovered this beautiful island on the day before Christmas...... "James Cook leaned on the deck of the Resolve, blowing the warm sea breeze, and wrote down the day's surprise. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

It was Christmas Eve before Christmas, and his fleet, one of two expedition ships, the Discovery, discovered the beautiful island in the morning light of the sun.

"It's a beautiful place, surrounded by coral reefs, with a lot of reefs on the outer side of the island and huge waves; Inside, the waves are gentle, and the silvery white sand is made entirely of coral fragments, glistening in the sun. At low tide, the spires of the reef emerge from the water, and the coral belt around the island is hundreds of meters wide. The island is lush and verdant, with tall betel nuts, umbrella-like tropical potatoes and tropical trees such as bananas, pineapples and bread trees. There are large coconut groves planted on the island......"

“…………”

"I can imagine the cold and humidity of London at the moment, and the taste of London in winter is terrible. But here, the sun is like Spain in summer, and it's wonderful! The endless blue sky, the clear blue water, and the lagoon in the distance are like the eyes of a beautiful woman looking forward to Shenfei, flashing with a clear luster. A large school of colorful tropical fish is clearly visible as they swim between the coral reefs. Especially when diving in the sparkling waters, the colorful, shapely, graceful living corals and coral reefs on the bottom of the sea are colorful, forming a peculiar underwater world, some like mountains, some like deep ravines, some like city walls, and some like mushrooms............ The shapes are different, the scenery is myriad, the beauty is dazzling, it makes people intoxicated, and it makes people want to stay here forever......"

Cook praised the island with all the beautiful words he knew, a guide from God, a gift from God to discover this beautiful island on Christmas Eve, in the early morning when the sun was rising, at a very, very special time.

Cook could feel the mental change in his crew. All people seem to have been given gifts by God himself, and everyone's spirit is so full and full of excitement.

Since leaving England a year and a half ago, Cook has led two expedition ships, the Determination and the Discovery, to successfully return the Omai [people] to Tahiti, and they set off from Plimouth to complete this mission in one year and three months. [Tahiti is Tahiti, the largest of the Polynesian islands in the South Pacific, and claims to be 'the closest place to heaven'].

Cook's fleet then headed north, and he was tasked with finding the northwest route. Although this mission his crew had no idea at all, it was a secret. The so-called Northwest Passage refers to the shipping route from Greenland through Canada's northern Arctic Islands to the north coast of Alaska, which is the shortest shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Northwest Passage is a route that Europeans have been searching for since the beginning of the Great Voyage, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean via the Arctic Islands. Located 800 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and less than 2,000 kilometres from the Arctic, the shipping lanes are one of the most difficult shipping routes in the world, but they are also a route to wealth that can generate significant economic benefits once it is commercially navigable. Historically, this route was not opened until 1906. In order to avoid being tracked by creditors, the Norwegian explorer Amundsen secretly set sail on the converted 47-ton herring fishing vessel Jia'a, which took three years to complete the arduous voyage.

It's still a long, far way from this point in time. And the influence of this route is not strong, at least Chen Ming didn't know that there was such a route in his mind, and he didn't think about sailing from the sea north of Canada to Europe in his mind.

A year and a half of expeditions have exhausted everyone in the fleet, but today's events will bring an unparalleled spiritual boost and the greatest and greatest stress relief to everyone in the fleet. When they set off north from the island again, all the crew members of the Determination and the Discovery would be as energetic as if they had just left London.

And as for the material supplies, look at the plants here. Betel nuts, coconuts, dates, tropical potatoes and bananas, pineapples, bread trees, etc., God, the food here can easily fill every cent of space on two ships.

Especially the bread tree, which is completely a gift from God.

For the first time, seafarers who came ashore discovered this amazing tree, which was an evergreen tree with grayish-brown bark and thick bark. The leaves are large, alternate, and thick leathery. This is not unusual, the island is right on the equator and there are too many evergreen trees here. But the amazing thing is the fruit of this tree.

When the ripe fruit is cut, the flesh is pale yellow, like a peeled sweet potato, and when cooked, it is very similar to a potato. It can be cooked with bacon or grilled. It can be eaten, including the seeds in the fruit. It can even be eaten raw.

Moreover, this miraculous tree bears a lot of fruit, and the yield is very high, and each tree is densely packed, and it is estimated that there can be hundreds.

As for the texture of this kind of wood, the wood material is light and soft and coarse, which can be used for construction, and the sap is sticky. But compared to its fruit, Cook was even more surprised by the former. He gave this tree a name, the bread tree.

"This amazing plant should be transplanted to the Caribbean, where the black slaves are in great need of this fruit." Cook wrote the last line with a pen. Then I picked up a piece of baked breadfruit from the plate on one side, which had a sweet and sour taste in it. He picked up the glass again and took a sip of the wine in his mouth, it was really a comfortable day.

The day before Christmas, they came to this wonderful place.

"We should leave a wonderful name for this island."

"God let us come here the day before Christmas and come to this beautiful island. Then let the name 'Christmas' be associated with the island forever. Let's call it Christmas Island......"

Cook's call was echoed by many of the crew.

On the reef on the shore, British seafarers set up bonfires in preparation for Christmas.

They brought down barrels of wine from the cabin, as well as barrels of bacon and vegetables.

The bread, nicknamed "hard pins" by the crew, was thrown aside and left unattended, and weevils and maggots infested the rotten, moldy bread. This super hard bread made of flour, salt and water spoils quickly. Sailors would knock them twice on the table before eating them, and wait for most of the bugs to fall out before putting them in their mouths. In view of this, many sailors waited until dark to eat bread, because then they would not be able to see the wriggling maggots in the biscuits. There is no way, the space on board is limited, and there is no condition to bake bread for all the crew members on and off the ship. The only people who can enjoy this treatment are a group of officers headed by the captain who are entitled to the soft bread every day.

Therefore, after discovering the magic of breadfruit, countless sailors will go crazy to climb down the trees and pick all the breadfruit they can see with their eyes.

Even pineapples and bananas don't have this kind of fruit, which can sit for a while just looking at it, is more attractive to them.

This is the European seafaring career in the 18th century, the sailors at the bottom of the sailing ship are really hard, and many captains and navigators have grown up step by step from the lowest sailors. This is a good guarantee of the 'quality' of European seafarers at the intermediate level. The difficult upbringing and countless hardships have forged the thick and tenacious nerves of the seafarers, which has also forged their strong character and brave spirit.

There are also cured meats on the sailor's menu, but these cuts are so hard that they are hard to swallow even after several hours of immersion. Later, some sailors developed a peculiar craft on these black, hard pieces of salted meat - they carved patterns into the meat, polished them and made them into statues.

There is also cheese, which Europeans love to eat, and of course cheese itself is rich in nutritional value. The way to preserve cheese on a sea boat is to soak it in asphalt, and the taste is disgusting. Sailors also had a daily ration of a gallon of beer, which was more than water could hold and was safe to drink instead of water. Drinking water is very perishable, and it doesn't take long for the water stored on the ship to become green, slimy, and smelly to vomit. So whenever it rains, as long as it doesn't hit a storm, it's not a bad thing. At least they can harvest fresh drinking water.

Therefore, if you come across an island in the sea with abundant flora and fauna, it is a gift from God.

Even James Cook himself, a man with decades of experience in the Royal Navy, wrote to his family during the Seven Years' War to describe the food on board in a deeply disgruntled tone: "We 'live on beef and biscuits, which have been in barrels for ten or eleven years; When I ate the biscuits, my throat was cold, because there were maggots inside, as if I was eating a pudding that had changed its taste. ”

On the sea, fish are the only source of fresh food for sailors, not only fish, but also dolphins, sharks, seabirds, and so on. Tortoises and sea turtles are also popular, and when put in containers, they can live for a long time without eating or drinking, and they are another source of fresh meat. And in the great voyages of the West in this era, if you get sick on the ship, then God will not be able to save you. The ship's hospital bed kills people better than they save. Because the beds were located several floors below deck, with no sunlight and no fresh air, Captain Cook told his friend what had happened to the sick "only to breathe the putrid stench that came out of their own excrement and sick bodies, and they were surrounded by filth, in which pests infested and devoured them alive." ”

Crew after crew swim in the seawater and drink the sweet water from the streams that flow into the sea on the island.

Not to mention that there is such an abundant food supply here, just this stream of clear water is the greatest and best gift to the hundreds of crew members of the Determination and Discovery.

"Alas, Charles, have you found any traces of the Aborigines?"

Before dark, Captain Cook's attaché, Charles Jack, led the men back to the camp, and a team of ten Marines and Charles himself returned with several birds. They headed inland at noon, an island that was quite small in search of the natives. Charles Jack was an accomplished botanist in his own right. He shares a surname with the captain of the Discovery, except that the captain is not called Jack, but Clark.

Captain Cook saw the dejected Charles and his party from a long distance, there were no fewer people, and no one seemed to be injured, what happened to them? Not only did Captain Cook have doubts in his mind, but many of the crew members also stopped their cheers.

"Mr. Captain, we don't need to worry about an attack by the natives right now. We had traveled five miles inland in the afternoon, and found no sign of human existence at all. We are more worried about the attack of friship birds than humans. The latter is a ferocious and large tropical seabird with a hooked beak and a wingspan of more than 2 metres, making it the fastest bird ever discovered in the world (up to 400 kilometres per hour). Frigate birds often hover over the surface of the sea, and if they spot a fish jumping out of the water, they will swoop down and quickly grab their prey. Interestingly, sometimes these birds are too lazy to forage for food themselves, but instead use their flying skills to "get in the way" and "rob" other seabirds of food. Therefore, some people jokingly call it "robber birds".

And the island right now is a paradise for birds.

A charming smile appeared on Captain Cook's face, no natives? This is a great thing. He could now declare the island to belong to the Kingdom of Great Britain. Such things have happened more than once in this era.

But Charles didn't have a smile on his face, "But we found something worse on this island than there are natives." A mile inland into this island, we found this! ”

Charles took out a wooden sign from the quilt behind his back that he knew at a glance that it was an artifact, a white wooden sign with a triangle on the top, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. In the center of the sign is written a line of words with red dye, square words!

"God, this is the handwriting of the Chinese." Captain Cook exclaimed in surprise. This was really beyond his expectations, and Chinese set foot on this beautiful island first.

"Yes, the handwriting of the Chinese. This abominable square word. ”

Charles and Cook were aware of the establishment of four government-funded ocean exploration bureaus by the Chinese government, and by mid-1176 A.H. news had reached Europe. The Pacific Ocean is the domain of its Second and Third Exploration Bureaus.

"There are several other signs of this kind on the island, and there are even bigger wooden pillars."

"They should have a sign by the lagoon, but it was swept away by the wind and waves......"

Although none of the people present knew what the words were written on the sign, they could fully imagine what it meant.

"That's really bad news."

The joy in Captain Cook's heart was greatly reduced, he was going to take the fleet here to rest for a few more days, but now it seems that it is better to leave this sad place as soon as possible.

The appearance of Chinese traces has weakened the 'sacred aura' of this island. It's like suddenly knowing that what you worship as a god is a bone that someone throws away after eating. Full of boredom!

"Zhujia Island, China!" Under the moonlight, the five big characters on the sign seemed to be grinning and laughing at Cook's delusions, and the five big characters were two smaller lines of small words, 'Hanchen Zhu Wu stood on September 25, the third year of Chengtian'...... (To be continued.) )