The crew members on board the Jinyuan were shocked by what they discovered!
They never expected that during a routine landing, they would actually find gold, and lots and lots of gold. The dozen or so crew members who landed for the first time brought back more than ten pieces of gold not long after they landed.
Gold nugget, what does this mean? It means there must be a big gold mine here!
Wang Shanxi was also extremely pleasantly surprised!
Although they are all from the Military Intelligence Department and are serious intelligence officers, in many cases, spying on intelligence is just their part-time job. Their real profession is ordinary sailors or soldiers. Strictly speaking, they are just ordinary people.
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When a person sees so much gold, and there is most likely a big gold mine above, he can't calm down.
Wang Shanxi took deep breaths several times in succession, and then carefully asked about their situation after landing. Less than half an hour later, he gave the order to organize another landing operation.
This time, more than fifty people logged in!
There are not many people on board the Jinyuan. In addition to more than a hundred crew members, there are also about fifty marines. This time, the majority of those who came ashore were still those marines, but Wang Shanxi himself also led the crew.
Several officials went ashore to check the situation, while the crew members stayed on the ship.
In a foreign country, who knows when they will face danger. Even if there is countless gold and silver in front of them, they still need to maintain the most basic precautions. All the people who land can die, but the crew members on the ship cannot be lost.
Because they still need to return to Wandan and the Tang Dynasty to pass back the news of the discovery of Australia.
Therefore, Wang Shanxi was very rational when making arrangements.
Of course, gold comes first. In order to avoid civil strife, Wang Shanxi has repeatedly emphasized that the gold they find this time will be treated as loot. In addition to turning over a part, the rest will be based on everyone's position and merit.
Differently, distribution does not mean that whoever logs in and picks up gold belongs to him.
Wang Shanxi and the others took four small boats and rowed all the way to the shore.
The place where the Jinyuan anchored was not too far from the shore, so it didn't take long for them to successfully reach the beach.
Wang Shanxi, like everyone else, carries a Suifu musket on his back, a Suifu pistol and a waist knife at his waist. But even so, he looks different from the others because he wears a Tang Dynasty dress.
Western company officer uniform.
The armed employees of Datang Western Company also wear military uniforms, but their military uniforms are somewhat different in style from the military uniforms of the army and navy.
Because Datang Western Company is just a commercial company, and it is currently solely owned by the royal family. It does not sell shares to the public or official organizations. Therefore, there are not many restrictions on what to do in all aspects. You can do whatever you like, or in other words
Li Xuan can come as he likes.
The uniforms of the military uniforms are based on blue. The tops of the officers' uniforms, like those of the army and navy, are still the traditional right-sided style. In terms of details, the cuffs have horizontal stripes to indicate the high rank of the military, and they still have epaulettes.
The uniforms of soldiers are also mainly dark blue with vertical stripes on their trousers, while those of sailors are white and those of marines are red.
After Wang Shanxi came ashore with a group of marines, he directly led the team to start the search and remained vigilant!
Because Wang Shanxi knew that although a piece of land seemed deserted, there were actually indigenous people, but their numbers were small. At the same time, there were also relatively large indigenous animals here.
Before, they saw a huge, bipedal animal that ran very fast. They killed one of them with a musket and found that there was a bag on the chest of this animal, so they named this animal directly.
He got a very vivid name, called kangaroo.
Even if this place is really deserted, not even a small animal, it is still very important to maintain a high degree of vigilance in a strange land, so after they landed, they maintained a high degree of vigilance and divided into three teams, left, center, and left.
, search forward in a fan shape, and the destination of the search is the place where the first batch of landing personnel found the gold nugget.
Not long after, they came to a small valley. According to the reports of the first group of landing team members, they found these gold nuggets here.
Wang Shanxi squatted down and looked at the ground. It looked good on the ground, but since the nugget gold was found here before, there must be a gold mine here.
So they continued to search, and after about half an hour, they discovered a river flowing by. This river was not big, only about ten meters wide. A closer look revealed that this river flowed directly into the sea.
At this time, several marines suddenly shouted: "Look! Look at the river sand here!"
Wang Shanxi also walked to the river at this time. When he looked at the river sand carefully, he found that the river sand was different from ordinary sand, because there were many yellow reflective things in the river sand here!
Wang Shanxi didn't know much about minerals, but another official accompanying him did. He picked up a handful of sand, then picked out a few small yellow gravels in the sand, and took it out again.
He observed carefully with a magnifying glass, and finally said with a look of ecstasy: "It's gold sand. The river sand here contains a lot of gold sand, and there must be a large gold mine nearby!"
Wang Shanxi also took the few grains of gold sand at this time, looked at it carefully, and then began to give instructions: "Go and get our boat parked on the beach, sail in from this estuary, we will follow this golden sand
Shahe continues the search!”
"Notify the Jinyuan again and let them search the nearby coastline and draw a chart of the nearby waters!"
Even if the location of the gold mine has not yet been found, there must be a gold mine nearby, and if there is a gold mine, this place must not be missed.
What's more, this is a plain with plenty of vegetation and the land is considered fertile!
I won’t say how useful it will be in the later stage, but it is enough as a colonial development point in the early stage.
Wang Shanxi has already decided to build a foothold here first, and then send the news back to the merchant house in Wandan to ask the country to send more ships and personnel here.
Wang Shanxi and his team's exploration lasted for three days in total, but due to the lack of enough tools, except for some gold sand and a few nuggets, they were unable to find the location of the real gold mine.
But this impact is not big. Wang Shanxi is already very sure that there must be a gold mine here. The only thing that needs to be determined now is the size and specific location.
After staying for three days, Wang Shanxi left with his people. After all, his Jinyuan was an exploration ship and was not here for colonial development. As long as he was sure that this place was a good place, that would be enough. As for these dog heads
Except for a small portion of the gold and some of the gold sand that was turned over, most of it was divided up as spoils of war.
It made every crew member and marine involved in the operation burst into laughter. The amount of gold nuggets and gold sand they found was not a small amount. Even after dividing it up, everyone could get a lot of gold.
After discovering Australia and finding a suitable place to stay, Wang Shanxi and the others were not in the mood to continue circling the entire Australia. They were ready to return. Otherwise, who knows what dangerous things they might encounter.
In early June, Wang Shanxi commanded the Jinyuan to begin its return voyage. However, it was not along the way it came. Instead, it was based on the chart drawn and then directly used the southeast monsoon to sail northwest. If their calculations were good, they would
They will cross a large area of sea and then directly arrive at the Western Islands of the Java Islands, which should generally be the sea area near Timor Island, and this is also the sea area where they set out before.
After they arrive at Timor Island, they will continue sailing north and are expected to pass through the strait in eastern Borneo and return to Luzon, where there is the first colony of the Tang Dynasty, the Luzon Mindao Trading Post.
The reason why they did not choose to go west back to Banten was because Wang Shanxi felt that it was not safe. Although they had already established a business store in Banten before going west, the Portuguese's control over the Indies was not weak.
After a long time, it was probably discovered that the colonial fleet of the Tang Dynasty had gone to Wandan.
Although Wang Shanxi also knew that the Tang Dynasty Western Company would definitely send many fleets south in the future, but considering the distance problem and the Portuguese problem, the first colony operated by the Tang Dynasty should be Luzon, not Wanwan.
Dan.
So in order to avoid any potential threats, he decided to return directly to Mindao instead of going to Banten.
Of course he doesn't know, and his worries are completely unnecessary!
At that time, after Ying Zihua led the exploration fleet south, the Tang Dynasty Western Company had sent a total of five fleets south, and the routes they took were all directly across the South China Sea and then to Luzon.
In the first batch of fleets, they sent 500 armed employees of Datang Western Company with live ammunition to the trading post on Mindao Island, as well as artillery for building bastions and a large amount of ammunition supplies.
After being replenished, the Mindao trading post expanded rapidly. In just a few months, it launched many battles, expelled all the surrounding indigenous people, or captured them as coolies to build fortresses for them.
It only took a few months for the bastion on Mindao Island to take initial shape, and successfully resisted an invasion called pirates, but in fact it was most likely a Portuguese invasion.
Now, the garrison on Cotton Island has reached more than 1,300 people. If we rely on the fortress, there is no hope of being able to break through the fortress unless there are tens of thousands of people to attack it.