The last time Chen Jian's smuggling trade was conducted was in the southwest of the oil port. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

When the construction of the forts and fortresses from the oil port began, the fleet of the Great Wilderness City was officially separated, and they continued to transport immigrants and supplies to the Great Wilderness City, and Chen Jian and them agreed to make peace with them in about a few months.

With the exception of the land surveyor, hired cartographers, and some managers of the Nanyang Trading Company, the rest of the men got on board and continued to the southwest.

This time, the destination is the desert island where Chen Jian smuggled trade last time, where he wants to reassert his sovereignty and also make a propaganda for the oil port.

Upon arriving, Wei Yuan, who had been following the Dutch captain on his last expedition, took eighty soldiers and set sail on a ship towards the hidden island where the pirates had gathered.

On the chart, the island where smugglers often operate is about Friday Island. And the Dutch captain called it the island of the goddess.

The island is huge, about 60,000 square kilometers, and there is a peak on the island that is nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, and the mountains divide the island of the goddess in half.

It is said that when Columbus sailed here, it happened to be a Friday. During a storm, the two ships were damaged beyond repair, so the crews of the two ships were left here for a while, and a simple castle was built.

When I returned from Europe the following year, the man was dead and a ghost castle.

Because the island was discovered on Friday, Spanish and Latin are close relatives, and Friday is the declension of Venus Day, the island became Friday Island or Goddess Island.

At this time, there was no official translation of the name, and whether it was from the perspective of Xinyada or the cultural incompatibility of the weekly worship, the island could basically be identified as Venus Island or Goddess Island.

From that ghost castle as a stronghold, the Spaniards gradually established their rule on the island of Goddess.

Hospitals, universities, churches, and the Loyal Tower, which urges the governors not to forget the royal family and declare their allegiance. The island is fertile with land, gold mines, and a large number of indigenous people.

Colonial rule began and gradually spread throughout the island's riverside and coastal areas. Plantations, mines, farms...... However, with the death of the last Aboriginal forty years ago, the extinction of the Aborigines on Goddess Island, these plantations gradually began to fall into disuse.

The slave trade was not yet in vogue, the Spanish crown had a monopoly on the trade, and only the British occasionally smuggled a few boats to bring in some African natives.

The local aborigines are basically dead, and the island cannot be caught, these plantations are unprofitable and have no cheap labor, and only some of the original soldiers are left to cultivate and support themselves.

Nearby was the shipping route to the colony, and a large number of pirates began to appear on the small island near the island of the Goddess.

Plundering ships, landing and looting, some of the Spaniards near the east had to abandon these places and move west or into inland towns.

The pirates took over the magpie's nest, and the French began to quietly migrate to this area, cultivating land, establishing small towns, trading with pirates, and feeding them.

Because of the mountain barrier and because the rule here is not enough to make ends meet, the Spaniards did not pay attention to the immigrants from the rest of the countries here, and they were not strong enough for pirates, plus there were smugglers in the colonies to report the news, and the island of Goddess and its surroundings gradually became a distribution center for pirates and smugglers.

The geographical location here is also important, but it is too far from Mincheng, and if the Republic builds a fortress here, it will inevitably arouse the alarm of the Spaniards, and they may be burned.

Therefore, Chen Jian and the Nanyang Trading Company behind him are not very interested in this island for the time being, and even if they are interested, they will wait until the end of the Battle of Gibraltar or the outbreak of the Reformation War.

It was not the first time Wei Yuan had come to Goddess Island, and when the ship he was on was very special in the eyes of the people in the town docked, everyone on the island knew that the group of Huaxia people was here again.

After the eighty soldiers, who were in the same uniform as the last time, with strange guns, and strange drumbeats like an army, landed, the townspeople rushed to tell each other.

The last time Jian Chen smuggled, he told the pirates and smugglers that he would come back in a year.

Since the last time he left, more merchant ships have left behind to wait on the island. It is unclear whether the returning fleet made a lot of money because of the distance, but the goods smuggled in the Spanish colonies made the smugglers a fortune.

In addition to Wei Yuan, there were more than 80 soldiers and many people who came to this town for the first time. The exoticism of the town excites them, and they are amazed to see those with different skin tones.

As long as it is profitable, this kind of pointing or surprise does not cause any unpleasantness. The pirates knew that there was a fleet behind the ship, and that there was only a few sample cargoes on board, and there wasn't much to plunder. Moreover, they were also apprehensive in the face of a formal, extremely neat-looking army.

The people here speak neither Spanish, nor Dutch, nor authentic French, nor English, but rather a fusion of languages.

Those few sentences of the Weiyuan Society can also do some communication, and when Jian Chen translates himself in Dutch, he translates himself as: Governor.

Those who waited on the island for this year's smuggling or trade soon learned that the governor from the mysterious China had once again appeared, and this time the fleet was said to be larger, with dozens of ships.

In the past two years, there have been many problems in Manila and Macau, such as massacres, Dutch attacks, looting of merchant ships, etc., resulting in some goods being in short supply here.

The sudden appearance of the governor was just right to make up for the huge demand of the colonies, and the previous year Italy had suffered a natural disaster, and the silk harvest had failed, and raw silk was in demand in the Netherlands or France.

For the sake of their own wealth, the Spanish royal family squeezed the sericulture industry in the colonies, strictly forbidding local sericulture and only buying it from the monopoly trade, which also made the sales of raw silk excellent.

Coupled with items such as cotton cloth, glass, machetes, and woodware, both merchants and local smugglers who were preparing to return to Europe expressed great enthusiasm for the arrival of the Chinese governor.

Wei Yuan told everyone that Governor Chen Jian was on the desert island last time, ready to trade. In addition, this time, the republic has opened up a settlement in the northeast as a transit point for goods, and hopes to carry out long-term trade in the future.

The smugglers entertained the Governor's envoy with a feast, trying to find out the Governor's attitude towards pirates.

If the attitude towards pirates is aggressive, they are willing to establish a relationship of trust with the Governor. And if the Governor was also the commander of the privateer fleet, they would be worried about the future.

Wei Yuan listened to the general situation, thought of what Chen Jian had explained, and only said that he did not know, and hoped that these people would follow him to the island to interview the governor.

At the banquet, Wei Yuan gave birth to a wonderful pleasure. A few years ago, he was a poor boy who was worried about eating a meal of meat, but now he can be respected by these rich people - although the Spanish silver coins are shoddy, and they only use knives to engrave a cross tea and castle lions on them in order to rush to work, and they don't even bother to grind them, but after all, they are real silver, and they can be exchanged for food in the civilized world.

For this respect, Wei Yuan understood that it came from the fleet behind him, from the eighty soldiers beside him and their bulging lead bullets wrapped in butter, and from the salvo and explosives that Jian Chen demonstrated to these people last time.

He had heard Jian Chen's stories about the aborigines of the island, and understood that they had existed, but now none of them could be found, and even the traces of their life here had been erased.

It's a terrible place, especially those abandoned plantations, where I don't know how many bones are buried.

After staying on the island for a few days, Wei Yuan saw a lot of things that he had never seen before and had only been instilled by Chen Jian, such as slaves.

It's a feeling to hear someone, and it's another to see it with your own eyes.

In the gathering places of "anti-thieves" such as the fleet, the Great Wilderness City and the Nan'an Academy, even if he is just trying to live a better life for himself, the things that have been quietly instilled in his heart gradually germinate after seeing them with his own eyes - right and wrong, civilization and barbarism, equality and slavery...... You don't necessarily need to experience all of this, but you may only need to witness it once, and the seeds that have been instilled before will gradually germinate.

On the island of the goddess, Wei Yuan has other tasks.

Jian Chen gave him a lot of gold and silver, hoping to find a Dutch or British captain who was proficient in European routes as a leader.

Money is not a problem, and neither is the goods, as long as there are people.

Now Europe is still in chaos, and in some places there are frequent storms, reefs are everywhere, there is no level of captain to navigate, and it is not a big problem to cross the ocean, but after arriving in Europe, trouble comes.

Moreover, Chen Jian made two preparations.

On the one hand, we discussed with the smugglers, and on the other hand, we had to take the normal channels to the Spanish colonies, and if we could get a letter from the governor or the governor, it would be easier to go to the European continent.

With the help of the conflict between the West and the Netherlands and the conflict between the West and the United Kingdom, it can also add a lot of bargaining chips to the negotiations.

If the normal channels go well, the Spaniards may send envoys to follow, which will definitely prevent the Dutch and British from making contact with Chen Jian.

Especially when the Spaniards thought that Chen Jian and these people knew nothing about European affairs, they would definitely use all kinds of means to obstruct them, and even did not hesitate to conspire on the way to cause Chen Jian's fleet to clash with people from other countries.

Moreover, for these smugglers and merchant ships or privateers, they did not want Chen Jian to master the direct route to Europe, or even Chen Jian did not want to make an agreement with Spain.

This is entirely possible, and Europeans at this time were extremely concerned about the monopoly of trade routes.

It was a time of deceit, and decades ago the captain of a ship could be assassinated in order to hinder circumnavigation around the world; In order to monopolize trade, it is possible to deceive and intimidate; For nautical charts can lurk in enemy commercial companies for twenty years......

In addition, Wei Yuan also had to follow some words written by Chen Jian, and some people on the island helped to find a group of people who could be used as translators for the fleet.

In the past two years, Chen Jian's Dutch dialect can be communicated, and at least he will not be incomprehensible when he goes to Europe. But since it's a round-the-world voyage, you need to be prepared for some other languages.

African tribes, Malay, and so on, all of these are needed.

There were black slaves, as well as Malay slaves from the Spanish colonies from the Spice Islands, who could be found if they were willing to spend money.

As for Chinese, although he has not spoken it for decades, although he does not know the official dialect of the Ming Dynasty or Hokkien, it should not be a problem to communicate after three or five months.

If it was possible, it would be nice to find a few people who knew South American Indian languages, and when he returned, he was going to go for a walk around Chile in the south.

There are excellent saltpeter mines, and the only nitrogen fertilizer available on a large scale at this time.

Phosphate and potassium fertilizers are not a problem, and there are many of them, but there is a lack of large-scale natural nitrogen fertilizers.

If the Great Wilderness City wants to grow tobacco for export, without nitrogen fertilizer, the soil will be degraded in three years, and if it can occupy it, the domestic grain can also be stabilized.

It's a pity that it's sodium nitrate, and if it's potassium nitrate, it's perfect, but in any case, in Chen Jian's eyes, it's a more important mineral than the gold and silver mines of the Spaniards.

These advance preparations can save you a lot of trouble in the future.

Wei Yuan was the first time to be alone, and he also understood that he was probably valued because of Jian Chen's inadvertent conversation with him last time, and the memory of smoking and fire.

Of course, it also has to do with the fact that he was one of the first batch of seagoing ship interns.

Sometimes, a small thing can change a person.

Going deeper, this is a potential shadow buried in the Great Wilderness City, the Mo Party and the Nanyang Company, where cronyism, dictatorship, and the like can be relied upon. To put it simply, this is also a personal effort and a historical process.