Chapter 927 Heading South to Java
"Lack of education and shamelessness!" Zhang Dong gave a very harsh comment after hearing this. He has lived in Sanya for several years and has long been accustomed to being surrounded by educated and civilized people. It is really hard to accept that he suddenly encountered such a group of undressed natives. This is so different from the education he has received. .
Zhang Yun just smiled and did not make any comment. He had hundreds of years more experience than these two children, so naturally he would not take such a topless native to heart. Looking around the world near the equator, there are tens of thousands of indigenous tribes like this, which is not a rare thing at all. Nutation will make a fuss about this, but it’s just that they don’t have enough knowledge.
However, the performance of the black soldier Marcus made Zhang Yun very satisfied. When he used his body to protect Zhang Zhi just now, he didn't even hesitate for a moment. This can only be done by people with extremely high courage and loyalty. Although Marcus is a foreigner, his performance when encountering critical situations is not inferior to that of the Han soldiers in the militia. Zhang Yun gave Marcus a thumbs up to express his appreciation.
Marcus had been in the army for almost a year, so he understood that this gesture meant a compliment, and he grinned widely, revealing two rows of big white teeth. To be appreciated by a leader, even for a small gesture, is a great honor for soldiers like them who enlisted as slaves.
Although the indigenous people did not show any hostile actions, their appearance still made the team of soldiers responsible for escorting the military nervous. The officer in charge immediately sent people back to the coast and sent a signal to the fleet at sea.
"Aborigines? No one was hurt, right?" Yan Chujie was not surprised by this. Humans had settled on this island more than ten centuries ago, so it was normal for aborigines to appear. Given Zhang Yun's temperament, he might have already started telling the students about the natives of Borneo. His only concern was Zhang Yun's personal safety. Every time traveler was a unique treasure to Haihan. Yan Chujie didn't want anything to happen to this solitary seedling in the field of natural science. After receiving the affirmative answer, Yan Chujie felt a little relieved. However, for safety reasons, he was still prepared to recall the scientific expedition team in advance.
"Why don't I go ashore for a run?" Roger was a restless person, so he immediately asked Yan Chujie for help.
"Are you going to go there yourself? Isn't this battle a bit big?" Yan Chujie was a little hesitant. Roger was also a general in the army after all, so sending him to perform this kind of escort mission would be a bit overqualified.
"Just think of it as a way to stretch your muscles and bones, and also see what kind of treasures there are on Borneo, which attracted Teacher Zhang here from Sanya." Seeing that Yan Chujie did not persist in his objection, Roger stood up and ordered: "Get my equipment Come!”
Of course, Roger's own equipment is still the foreign goods brought over by the North American gang. The firearms are well maintained, but the inventory of bullets is inevitably getting smaller and smaller. Although he is a very capable mechanic and has mastered the technology of bullet reloading, this is still not enough to offset the speed of consumption. This year, Roger didn't even use his own special weapons for target shooting on the island. He used the Trinity rifle more often. Only when he was on a mission would he take out his treasure and show it off. Appearance.
So Roger took another platoon of people, landed in a small boat, and met up with the scientific expedition team that had landed earlier. Roger's mentality was vaguely hoping that something would happen so that his men could move and have a chance to show off their actual combat abilities. However, the indigenous people in the nearby area may have also felt that these outsiders were not easy to deal with, and they disappeared into the forest and never appeared again. After Zhang Yun and his students spent two days collecting specimens nearby, the group returned to the ship safely.
The fleet continued south along the coastline. After sailing for a day, it came to the mouth of a river and discovered a fishing village here. Although the natives here were a little frightened by the outsiders arriving in large ships, they did not adopt a hostile attitude. After the two parties communicated through simple body movements, the Haihan people took out crystal clear glassware, fine refined salt and large pig iron ingots, and exchanged a large amount of fruits and fresh catches from the locals.
For the uncivilized indigenous people, Haihan's most useful weapons were not rifles and cannons, but various cheap industrial products from across the ages. Even the civilized world can hardly resist the influx of these low-cost products into the market, and the indigenous people who have little knowledge are even less resistant to this. This trick was used by the Yu family and his son in the fishing village as early as when the Crossing Group landed in Yulin. Over the past few years, they have accumulated enough operational experience. Although they do not understand the native language of Borneo, this does not hinder their precision. The Haihan people who were into trade sold these things to them.
Of course, Haihan does not expect the natives to come up with anything valuable to trade with him. The purpose is just to establish a good image first and let the local natives distinguish Haihan from those golden-haired and blue-eyed Western colonists. In the future, when I officially set foot on Borneo in the future, the resistance I will encounter may be smaller because of this.
The fleet arrived at Sukadana Bay, the only bay on the southern coast of Borneo, on October 20. However, there is no natural harbor in this bay with a span of more than 30 nautical miles, and the fleet does not intend to sail there. Stop here for supplies, because the ruler here is loyal to the Matalan Kingdom, and Haihan's current interactions with the Matalan Kingdom are only trade through middlemen. It is difficult to guarantee that this fleet will not appear near the coast. Incur the hostility of the other party. Yan Chujie did not want to cause trouble and offend the Matalan Kingdom, so he ordered the fleet not to stop here and sail directly through the bay from the open sea.
About seventy or eighty nautical miles south of Sukadana Bay, the coastline begins to turn eastward and extends, which is already the southern tip of Borneo. The combined fleet turned east and continued along the coastline according to the established route, while making corrections to the chart in Haihan's hands.
Fan Ji and Zheng Zha were both jealous of the sea map in the hands of the Haihan people. They really didn't understand how the Haihan people, who claimed to have come to this sea area for the first time, had such a highly accurate nautical map in their hands. With this thing, the convenience it brings in setting routes and calculating voyages is simply beyond money calculation. No wonder the Haihan people are so courageous that they dare to send their fleet to unfamiliar waters thousands of miles away from the base camp to conduct military exercises. In addition to their confidence in their own force, they should also rely on the navigation information they have. one. The Haihan people claim to know the world and the earth, and they indeed have real abilities.
It took the combined fleet more than three days to complete a nearly 400-nautical-mile cruise along the southern coast of Borneo. Apart from the constant rain that made me feel irritated, I encountered no other troubles during this period. Occasionally, if other ships appear on the sea, they will immediately turn around and leave far away after seeing this huge fleet. The southern coast of Borneo has fewer populated areas than the west coast. Although there are vast coastal plains and numerous rivers, the Southeast Asian natives who are not good at farming obviously do not know how to use these lands to improve their living conditions. Most of the indigenous villages and towns seen by the combined fleet were still in their primitive tribal state, and their civilization process was at least nearly a thousand years behind places like Annan in the Ming Dynasty. It is said that the Sulu and Bani Kingdoms in northern Borneo once received the canonization of the Ming Dynasty, and their level of civilization should be slightly higher. However, by this period in the 17th century, they had been severely suppressed by the Spaniards entrenched in the Philippines.
On October 24, the combined fleet arrived at the southeastern tip of Borneo. From here to the north is the Makassar Strait leading to the Celebes Sea and the Philippine Islands. Across the strait to the east is the Soviet Union with an area of 180,000 square kilometers. Rawaisi Island. There are many mineral deposits on this island, but they are not among the objectives of this trip.
The combined fleet plans to turn south here and cross the Java Sea, conducting a comprehensive cruise on the northern coastline of Java Island. The biggest risk on this voyage is not the Dutch entrenched in Batavia at the western end of Java Island, but the Matalan Kingdom that occupies most of the island.
Java Island has a long and narrow terrain, about 970 kilometers from east to west, and about 160 kilometers at its widest point from north to south. It covers an area of more than 120,000 square kilometers. The terrain is mainly mountainous and hilly, with numerous volcanoes, including 14 volcanoes above 3,000 meters above sea level. This place is located in the Pacific Seismic Zone, and the frequency of earthquakes is beyond ordinary people's imagination. There are as many as a thousand large and small earthquakes every year. It is not a truly livable place.
At the end of the 13th century, Kublai Khan sent an army of thousands of warships from FJ Quanzhou on an expedition to Java. However, the results were not ideal. At that time, the ruler of Java, King Ketalayasa of Majapahit, first surrendered and then rebelled. Withdrew the Yuan army. By the current period, the Majapahit Kingdom had already disappeared in the long river of history. The Matalan Kingdom that replaced it had a larger territory and stronger strength. It not only occupied most of Java Island, but also expanded its sphere of influence to Southern Borneo and Eastern Sumatra. It's a pity that their attack on Batavia last year was in vain. If the Dutch are driven out of the place, it will basically declare that the entire Java Island is under their rule.
The Matalan Kingdom is full of hostility to the Dutch, but this does not mean that they will regard Haihan as one of their own. In terms of the degree of ambition for external expansion, the ruler of the Matalan Kingdom, Ratten Langsang, is probably Not much worse than the Haihan Executive Committee. If he knew the development trajectory of Haihan people in the past few years, he would probably regard Haihan as a competitor.
However, Yan Chujie did not want to just go around the outer sea. The executive committee made a request before setting off, hoping that he could lead the team to the ports of Surabaya, Semarang, and Cirebon on Java Island to have a look at the local ports. Regarding the development situation, if possible, it would be better to discuss trade cooperation with Matalan.
Of course, the combined fleet was not unprepared for this. When it went south, it had already contacted several Ming merchants who had business dealings with the Matalan country and asked them to send people to ship from Ambona Island to accompany them. When the fleet sailed south through the Java Sea and arrived near Madura Island, southeast of Surabaya, it sent a supply ship carrying several Ming merchant envoys to the Surabaya port to contact the Matalan people and inform the joint fleet of its request to enter the port for supplies.
In fact, the current name of Surabaya is Surabaya, and the Chinese name "Sishui" was originally derived from the fact that after the military disaster in Zhangzhou in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, a large number of immigrants from Longxi County, Zhangzhou Prefecture, southern Fujian came south to Java, bringing with them the folk people of southern Fujian. Believe in "Sizhou Buddha" and build temples to worship him. Later, these temples "Sishui Temple" dedicated to gods gradually evolved into the place name of this place. Another explanation is that "Si" means swimming, and Si Shui symbolizes the situation of the Han people leaving their hometowns to make a living in Southeast Asia.
Although at this time, this place does not have the name Surabaya, all the maps in the hands of the Haihan people marked this place as "Sishui", so they continued to use it incorrectly. This has been one of the most important external ports on Java Island since the Middle Ages. Before the rise of Batavia, more than 70% of Java Island's import and export trade was completed here, which shows its importance.
The envoy sent by Haihan must be very eloquent. He actually persuaded the Matalan people in Surabaya Port to allow them to obtain supplies locally. However, the Matalan people were also very cautious. After hearing that the opponent was a fleet, they asked to send people out to sea first to check the situation. This sight almost scared the Matarans away. As long as you are not blind, you can see that 80% of the ships in this fleet are warships, and some of them are larger than the Dutch warships in Batavia. Much bigger. With this kind of formation, how could the Madalan people dare to put the fleet into the port? If the Haihan people had ulterior motives, the defenders in the port would not be able to defend the offensive of this army at all.
Fortunately, Yan Chujie quickly provided a new compromise plan, which was to have the fleet dock near Madura Island across the Surabaya Strait, and only send supply ships to Surabaya Port to purchase the required supplies. Of course, Yan Chujie did not forget to request to meet with local managers during this period in order to deepen mutual understanding and discuss the possibility of trade between the two parties.
On October 28, the fleet dispatched two supply ships, led by the Matalan guide ship, and sailed into Surabaya Port from the north of the Surabaya Strait. Just in case, there were no time travelers on the two ships, but Roger's subordinate Li Dagui was in charge. He will engage with local authorities at the port and then see if there is an opportunity to arrange an official meeting for both parties nearby.
These two ships also brought a lot of good things produced by Haihan and Daming to show Haihan's sincerity in hoping to carry out trade with the Matalan country. Yan Chujie believed that no one would refuse such a good thing delivered to their door, because in the past, these goods had to be re-exported to Surabaya Port through merchants from the Ming Dynasty. Not only were they expensive, but the quantity was small, they might not be available even with money.
(End of chapter)