“Line up orderly, those who push will be thrown straight into Gabes Bay!”
On the dock, more than a dozen Tunisian Legion soldiers on horseback shouted loudly in Arabic.
In front of the three gangplanks leading to the transport ships, the doctors of the Gemini Trading Company were examining these former members of the Tunisian Guard, letting those who were physically robust board the ship, while the others were turned away without hesitation.
Those who boarded the ship sighed in relief, knowing they would at least not starve in the future. And according to the official Tunisian promise, as long as they performed well in New Zealand, they could bring a family member there after a year.
A scruffy Tunisian Guardsman, clothed in tattered garments, led his wife and two children around the crowd and directly onto the ship under the soldiers’ escort, immediately drawing envious stares— he was a blacksmith, considered a high-end talent, and thus was able to board the ship with his whole family at once.
Before long, the three transport ships were filled with people and slowly sailed out of the harbor, while another three empty ships immediately docked at the wharf to continue loading laborers.
Yes, from this moment onward, the so-called Tunisian Guard had become a thing of the past, and henceforth they had only one identity— New Zealand laborers.
The next day at noon, the Gemini Company’s fleet, filled with 5000 laborers, set sail, circling past the Strait of Gibraltar on their way to the distant New Zealand Island.
…
The South Pacific.
Cook Strait.
On the bow deck of the Gemini Company’s armed merchant ship “Yuyang,” Marion Du Fresne gazed at the vast and flat black sand beach in the distance and finally took a deep breath of relief.
Previously, neither France nor Russia had explored this large island named New Zealand— a landmass almost the size of England— and yet the Crown Prince had quite confidently instructed them to find a port nearby for anchorage.
At first, he was extremely worried because according to information gathered from the Spaniards, British explorers seemed to have landed from the north side of the island.
He commanded the fleet to sail along the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand for three days and indeed saw the good harbor that the Crown Prince had mentioned.
Hmm, Joseph did not know the exact location of Kaffia Port, but he remembered a documentary that mentioned it was the closest port to the New Zealand pastoral regions.
Under Du Fresne’s command, the five ships of the Gemini Company slowly moored in a “concave”-shaped bay, then they lowered the boats through the gap between two towering boulders on the shore, and set foot on this mysterious island.
As the vanguard of the Gemini Company’s colonization team, only over 600 people came this time.
Initially, the company recruited just under 300 volunteers since these islands in the South Pacific were notoriously desolate, and adventurers were not too keen to come here for opportunities.
It wasn’t until the Crown Prince expressed to the Church that the island had a population of over a hundred thousand people and would definitely accept Catholicism that the situation began to change.
The Church quickly organized a large number of priests to fund their own way to join the fleet for colonization, and even their expenses were provided by the Church— after all, finding a new congregation of over a hundred thousand was an extremely valuable resource in those days.
Perhaps this achievement could be the capital for competing for the Archbishop position in the future, so to compete for spots, the dioceses were nearly at each other’s throats.
Moreover, to gain the support of the Gemini Company, the Church even handed over the command of this group of priests to the company. Explore new worlds at empire
The sailors quickly set up a makeshift encampment on the shore and began moving things from the ship onto land.
Meanwhile, Dufresne, leading a small exploration team of fewer than a hundred people, headed toward the interior of the islands to the east—the curtain had just been raised on the vitally important task of building France’s New Zealand colony from under their feet.
After walking for a day and a half, as they approached a series of winding hills, they suddenly heard a loud shouting coming from a huge Pandanus tree ahead.
Dufresne remembered the Crown Prince’s admonition and promptly ordered the exploration team to stop, then gestured for the interpreter, Tolman, to step forward. Before coming here, they specifically went to Tahiti and hired a few locals who understood French—the place had been colonized by Spain very early on, so while there weren’t many who spoke French, there were still some to be found.
Tolman walked forward and waved friendly at the brown-skinned warrior in the tree, babbling something in his language, and after the other replied with a few sentences, the interpreter turned to the commander and said, “Sir, they want us to put down our guns.”
Dufresne felt a bit tense, and sure enough, as the Crown Prince had said, these natives were not simpletons at all. Although almost all of them were naked, they knew that guns were dangerous items.
In fact, this was one of the reasons why the British colonization of New Zealand had been so tortuous historically—more than 100 years ago, Spaniards had arrived in New Zealand and made contact with the Maori, exposing them to many new things. They were no longer the unworldly bumpkins they had been.
This made them much more difficult to deal with than the Indigenous people of the Americas. They had seen firearms, they planted potatoes and sweet potatoes brought by the Spaniards, and sweet potatoes had even become one of their staple foods.
Dufresne instructed his men to place their weapons on the ground, then proceeded forward with two assistants and the interpreter to make contact with the Maori man.
He had only taken a few steps when suddenly dozens of Maori warriors armed with stone spears emerged from the underbrush and low hills around them.
Dufresne signaled for his men not to move and had the interpreter call out loudly, “We are friends, here to do business with you.”
Seeing that the leading Maori did not make any threatening moves, he boldly stepped forward and, following what was written in the “New Zealand Guide” given by the Crown Prince, moved his nose toward the native’s nose.
The latter seemed to be taken aback, but immediately leaned forward, touched his nose against Dufresne’s, and then burst into joyous laughter.
The surrounding Maori warriors smiled, and a few even approached voluntarily to touch noses with the exploration team members.
The simple and effective Maori traditional custom—the “hongi,” or nose-to-nose greeting—immediately brought the two groups much closer.
By evening, the exploration team was led by the Maori warriors to meet the “hapu”—the chieftain of the Maori tribe—in the area.
After receiving a soft woolen blanket as a gift from Dufresne, the chieftain joyously gathered his people for a welcoming celebration where they feasted on roasted meat, seafood, and sweet potatoes. The exploration team members reciprocated by strictly following the interactions prescribed in the “Guide” with the Maori.
Subsequently, Dufresne, guided by the tribal chieftain, trekked for five days to reach a very large Maori village. There, he successfully met with the head and the High Priest of Te Iwi o Te Rāwhiti, or the “Eastern Tribe.”
A Maori “iwi” is equivalent to a tribal confederation, and the “Eastern Tribe” was the largest confederation on the North Island of New Zealand.
Compared to the Dutch, who were beaten terribly by the Maori and chased out of New Zealand many decades ago, and to the British who, several decades later, failed to subdue the Maori despite committing a significant force of soldiers and fleets, Dufresne’s trip could scarcely be described as smooth—it was nothing short of miraculous.
This was the terrifying power of an information gap!