Outside the camp, everything as far as the eye could see was dense virgin forest, making the whole world look green. Lu Hu stood bored at the edge of the camp that the crew had burned, occasionally walking out of the camp and walking into the forest.
He observed the trees in the virgin forest in the forest and found that he didn't recognize any of them.
This is a completely unfamiliar continent, and the Han people have never owned any land here.
The sun was very strong. Lu Hu wiped the fine sweat on his head, and finally took the towel on his shoulder to wipe his face. He couldn't help but cursed: "This 'South America' is the same as 'Africa'. It's December."
midsummer."
The expedition fleet led by Lu Hu arrived in the Americas. He is now on the east coast of South America at ten degrees south latitude, in what will later be known as Salvador, Brazil.
The South American continent is now a colony of European countries.
More than a hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 16th century, Portuguese and Spanish colonists began to invade South America. In 1521, the conqueror Hernan Cortes eliminated the Aztec civilization in Mexico and established "New Spain"
.In 1533, Francisco Pizzello captured Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, wiping out the Inca civilization in South America.
In fact, germ warfare played a big role in the war between Europeans and South American indigenous people. Europeans living in Eurasia adapted to a large number of germs and coexisted peacefully with these germs. However, in South America, which has a very narrow horizontal width,
, the types of germs are very limited. After the Spanish and Portuguese landed in Latin America, viruses such as smallpox raged in Latin America, helping the conquerors of the Iberian Peninsula to kill a large number of indigenous tribes.
In December of the 21st year of Chongzhen, Portugal had completely occupied the coast of Brazil, and Spain ruled the other coasts of South America except Brazil.
In fact, Lu Hu's journey was not easy.
First of all, it is not easy to find a guide. There are many hidden reefs in the ocean, and it is easy to hit the rocks if you don't follow the waterway explored by predecessors. Li Zhi sent people to operate in Macau for more than a year before he found a Han Chinese who was familiar with the waterway from Europe to Asia.
This Han man followed the Portuguese ship to sell raw silk and traveled between Europe and Asia for more than ten years. He was an assistant surveyor on the ship. Li Zhi spent a lot of money to hire this Han man to lead Lu Hu to the west coast of Africa.
Secondly, we have to avoid European armed merchant ships and warships along the way.
In order to carry more cargo, this expedition took three steamships instead of ironclad ships. Although the tonnage of the three ships was about 500 tons, and they were equipped with twelve 18-pound guns. But compared with the Europeans,
The firepower of an armed merchant ship with twenty guns, or even a battleship with more than forty guns, and a steam ship is slightly insufficient.
The so-called axiom only exists within the range of cannons. On the high seas of this era, the law of piracy was completely based on the law of the jungle. Seeing Lu Hu's merchant ship, many European fleets tried to rob it.
Only because the steamship was much faster than the European sailing ships, Lu Hu was able to avoid being caught by the European fleet.
Starting from Tianjin, it passes through Taiwan and enters the South China Sea, crosses Malacca and enters the Indian Ocean, bypassing the entire Indian subcontinent and reaching the east coast of Africa. From the east coast of Africa, it goes south around the Cape of Good Hope, and then goes all the way north to the Ivory Coast. From the Ivory Coast all the way west, the fleet directly
Driving to South America.
The Europeans were ferocious colonists and would plunder Lu Hu's fleet at any time. The countries along the route without colonists were not good people and would kill people and seize ships at any time. Therefore, Lu Hu did not dare to visit the famous ports on this waterway. The fleets along the way
They are all looking for supplies in small seaports and fishing villages with fewer people.
After driving for two and a half months, Lu Hu's expedition team reached the wild continent of South America.
Although the Portuguese had nominally conquered the entire Brazil at this time, the actual population of colonists in Brazil was very small. Except for some farms near a few big cities, most of the Brazilian mainland was virgin forest. Lu Hu landed at several landing points in succession.
They burned open space to build a temporary camp, but no Portuguese force noticed it.
The sky was getting darker and darker. Lu Hu looked at the forest in the distance and said anxiously: "Why hasn't today's expedition team come back?"
With Li Zhi's current naval strength, it is not realistic to conquer South America. For Li Zhi, who is not short of land for the time being, this matter has no practical benefits. Lu Hu came to South America this time to find rubber trees.
Rubber trees are important industrial raw materials, and can even be said to be valuable strategic materials. Without rubber, many modern industrial products cannot be produced, such as tires. For Li Zhi, who is determined to develop a modern industrial system, the lack of rubber is intolerable.
.
So Li Zhi sent an expedition team.
The expedition team initially tried to deal with the Portuguese, hoping to buy rubber fruits through the Portuguese. However, the expedition team soon discovered that the Portuguese colonies were very hostile to foreign fleets and basically did not accept foreign ships to dock. Lu Hu was in
Both Portuguese ports were bombarded by coastal artillery.
In desperation, the expedition team had no choice but to search deep into the coast.
However, Lu Hu was lucky. He only changed five places and established five temporary camps. The search for rubber trees was starting to take shape.
After the expedition team sent to the jungle yesterday sent Tianjin fine cloth to the local Indians, the locals started babbling, seeming to say that there were rubber trees in the woods near them that Li Zhi drew on rice paper.
Today the expedition team brought some steel machetes and Daming rice wine as gifts to the local indigenous people, hoping that the local indigenous people would take them to find rubber trees.
I wonder if we can harvest this precious rubber tree today and bring the seeds back to the Ming Dynasty.
Lu Hu paced back and forth in the camp, waiting anxiously.
Finally, when night was about to fall, Lu Hu saw the expedition team returning with a full load.
Not only did the expedition team come back, but the native Indians in the forest also came with them. The members of the expedition team and the Indians were all red in the face, and they had obviously drank all the rice wine in the forest. Their backs were full of rice wine.
There are baskets of fruits and some green branches and leaves.
"Captain, we found the rubber tree!"
Lu Hu walked up quickly, walked directly behind the members of the expedition team, and took out the branches and leaves from their radish baskets.
The leaves were three compound leaves with leathery edges. Lu Hu broke off a branch and saw thick milky sap inside.
Lu Hu looked at the fruits in the basket again. It was an oval-shaped capsule with a brown-yellow hard shell on the outside, just like what the prince described. Lu Hu anxiously knocked on a hard fruit and saw that it was true inside.
They are brown seeds.
This is indeed a rubber tree fruit.
Lu Hu patted the members of the expedition team on the shoulders and laughed.
The Indian chief nearby saw Lu Hu so happy and thought that Lu Hu wanted to eat this fruit. He pointed at the rubber fruit and tried his best to make a vomiting gesture, trying to make Lu Hu understand that this fruit was poisonous.
