"In South America, there is a mountain range that spans half of the Americas, and that's the Andes.

We stayed in Ecuador for more than a week, collecting countless novel plants that were almost identical to those described in Guigu's Encyclopedia of the Flora of the Americas, and General Niu read the book every day, telling us about the benefits of those plants, such as high-yielding corn, hardy potatoes, and spicy peppers.

Originally, according to the original plan, it was to return immediately, but because of an explosion at sea that frightened all the crew, on the way from Hawaii to South America, the deck of the "Liubo" ship was like a cannon fire, I still can't forget the crew that was blown into the sky, and the sky was full of wood chips, gold-plated utensils and all kinds of materials, I heard that it was caused by a leak in the steam valve, from the boiler room to the explosion of the weapons depot, except for a small number of survivors in the bow and stern, All the others were killed, so General Niu ordered all the ships in the Americas to be overhauled before returning home.

This news was also embraced by everyone, after all, no one wants to be blown up suddenly.

We don't have many people, so the repair of the ship is relatively slow, the supplies on the sea ship are almost exhausted, if it is not replenished on the island of Hawaii, I think we will never reach South America, I don't want to think about the hardships and hardships at sea, it was really a terrible experience, people who have not really reached that point can not understand, so we split half of the people to find supplies, by the way, the expedition, the other half of the people are responsible for repairing the ship.

It was a privilege that I was assigned to the expedition, perhaps because I always brought good fortune to the team, and General Niu did not let me continue to manage the boilers, but took me on an expedition to the American continent, and at the same time asked me to record what I saw after the landing with three historians.

At that time, I was very excited, I don't know why General Niu would use me so much, until later, it was a long time after returning home, I didn't know that it was General Xu Yang who had read the "Navigation Log" I wrote, and then recommended me to General Niu, saying that the navigation log I wrote was very insightful, and the language was also very humorous and simple, and said that he wanted to go back to Datang to help me publish a book, but I didn't expect him to do it later, making me a well-known navigation hero in Datang, of course, these are all later words.

Moving on to the adventure, we headed south from Ecuador and the Andes Mountains were as indicated on the map.

General Niu often looked at that big map, and every time he finished reading it, he wrapped it in fine silk, because its value was so great, and all our routes were followed by this map, and I couldn't imagine how people without a map would survive on that vast and boundless sea.

At the same time, I also have the deepest admiration for Guiguzi to draw such a wonderful and earth-shattering sea chart, and only those gods in mythology can explore all of this earth in their lifetimes, it is obvious that Guigu is such a god man.

We used the compass to point the direction, and then headed in the direction of the mountain range, our goal is to climb the highest mountain, and then plant the golden dragon flag of the Tang Dynasty there, of course, this is also the task that General Xu Yang has entrusted us with before, under the whole world, it is not the king's land, every inch of land we have walked through must declare the ownership of this place, and tell the Turks, the Tibetans, the Koreans, anyone in the world, this is the territory of the Tang Dynasty.

America was bigger than we thought, and I suddenly missed the beautiful island of Hawaii, where it only took an hour or two to run from north to east, and there were no mosquitoes and flies on that island, it was like a paradise, with white sand beaches and light blue shores, and you could run around barefoot at will.

And in this South America, judging from the map, it is even bigger than the Tang Dynasty, and there are some poisonous insects and poisonous snakes everywhere, and several soldiers have been bitten, and the place where they are asked is swollen and high, and the itch is unbearable.

We marched not far from the coast, and did not find any natives, nor did we see a new plant, and for a whole day we found nothing.

It was getting late, General Niu ordered to set up camp, and huge torches were lit around to prevent the wild beasts in the forest from escaping and hurting people, and I and the other three historians were assigned to the same tent, and the three of them obviously looked down on me, of course, I would not go to myself to be bored, they always talked to each other, quoting scriptures, I couldn't say anything at all, because I couldn't remember the books I read since I was a child, and I didn't have the slightest common language with those Confucian scholars.

I've read their logbooks, and they are all 'ridiculous' or something, and I can't understand them at all, so I don't participate in their night talks, just take off my wet shoes, put them in a clean place, and then cover my head and go to sleep.

The next morning, he was woken up by the sound of snare drums, and when he came out of the tent, he saw General Niu in high spirits on the roll call.

Sometimes I really admire General Niu, he personally led the team to watch the night for most of the night last night, but today he is still in the spirit of being like no one, and he is worthy of being a fierce general of my Tang Dynasty.

Today our destination remains the same in the Andes, but this time we encountered some problems along the way.

We met the natives.

Lifting the huge leaves of the rainforest, we saw more than a dozen natives singing and dancing on the beach, but this time the experience was clearly not as pleasant as it was in Australia.

Because, we see that the natives are eating people.

Kill a living person alive, roast it on a fire and eat it, a huge bonfire crackling and burning, and several canoes tethered to it.

I don't remember much of the process in my limited memory, because I was vomiting all the time, and I was dizzy when I saw the limbs of the whole place, all kinds of scattered intestines, heart and liver, and so on.

I only remember that General Niu waved the sword in his hand and rushed out, and the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty arrested all those guys who were still celebrating.

These natives are very different from the Australian natives, their hair is stiff and straight, their hair is weaker, their cheekbones are prominent, their faces are broad, and their complexions are darker and somewhat Turkic-like.

We had a couple of interpreters who obviously couldn't understand what the natives were saying, but I think we could guess it, because they were all frightened, and they were on their knees and kowtowing, and begging for their lives.

General Niu is obviously not a good temper, and he had already made up his mind to kill before seeing these people eating people, and ordered the sergeant to behead all these natives.

Four lucky ones survived this time, and if we had come any later, the four natives would have been eaten, and Niu Jinda walked up to them and broke the tethered rattan on their bodies.

Since then, I think this is the first time that our Datang has occupied South America and had the first dialogue with the Indians. ―――――― excerpted from, "Memoirs of Zhang Quandan" R1152