“We swear!” was the answer from four thousand throats. A triple discharge of musketry and twenty-five guns, then saluted this new flag, the flag of redemption for one-half of South America, which passed the Cordillera, waved in triumph along the Pacific Coast, floated over the foundations of two new Republics, aided in the liberation of another, and after sixty-four years, served as a funeral pall to the body of the hero, who thus delivered it to the care of the immortal Army of the Andes.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PASSAGE OF THE ANDES.
1817.
“WHAT spoils my sleep is not the strength of the enemy, but how to pass those immense mountains,” said San Martin, as from Mendoza he gazed upon the snow-clad summits of the Andes, which as a mighty barrier separate the wide plains of the Argentine Pampa from the smiling valleys of Chili, through twenty-two degrees of latitude, from the desert of Atacama to Cape Horn.
These mountains at 33° south latitude divide into two parallel ranges, one running southward along the borders of the Pacific Ocean, the other forming the grand Cordillera upon which San Martin gazed from Mendoza. The coast range is a succession of granite hills with rounded summits and gentle slopes, like to the waves of a petrified sea. The great Cordillera is in its centre composed of three or four ranges of conical and sharply-defined peaks which rise one over the other to a height of 21,000 feet above the level of the sea, crowned with perpetual snow. At its feet lie deep valleys, from which perpendicular precipices rise up to the clouds, and the mighty condors wheeling in airy circles at that dizzy height are the only living things to be seen. There are also lakes fed by torrents of melted snow which, pouring down the mountain sides into these valleys, find at times no exit, their path being closed by immense heaps of débris hurled from the lofty summits by the force of ice and water. These immense groups of mountains are traversed by rugged defiles, and narrow paths, the result of volcanic action, wind along the edges of precipices, while below roar the mountain streams carrying great rocks along with them, tossing them about as though they were straws. Here nature displays her giant strength as an artificer, decking herself with no other ornaments than the cactus, mosses, and thorny plants; everywhere are seen traces of the world in embryo, as it emerged from chaos in the process of creation.
Between the Cordillera and the coast range stretches a great central valley, cut across in places by spurs from the higher mountains, which take an oblique line to the south till they lose themselves in the ocean, or reappear as solitary islands or as clusters of islands, which are the summits of mountains springing from the bed of the sea.
The great Cordillera can only be crossed at certain passes. Those which have connection with our history are: in the centre, those of Uspallata and Los Patos, in front of Mendoza and San Juan; to the north, those of La Ramada and Come-Caballos, by which the Argentine province of La Rioja communicates with Coquimbo and Copiapó; and to the south, that of the Planchon, which gives access to the valley of Talca, and that of the Portillo which leads to the plain of Maipó and to the capital of Chile. These passes, from 9,000 feet to 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, are covered with snow in winter, and are practicable only in the height of summer. Until then they had been crossed only by small detachments of soldiery, or by troops of mules, the paths being in many places so narrow as only to give room for one mounted man at a time. The passage of a numerous army with guns and baggage was held to be impossible and had never been thought of till the feat was accomplished by San Martin. Food and forage for men, mules, and horses had to be carried with them, and it was necessary to reach the other side in force sufficient to overcome a watchful enemy; to concentrate the different columns upon his weak points; and to make all the preparations secretly, so that the army might rush like a thunderbolt from the western slopes of the mountains and do battle in the open plain.
San Martin, by his complex spy system, had deluded the enemy into the belief that the invasion would come from the passes of the south; his real intentions he had kept from friends and enemies alike. In September, 1816, he invited the Pehuenche Indians, who occupied the eastern slopes of the Andes commanding the entrances to the passes of the Planchon and Portillo, to a conference at the fort of San Carlos to the south of Mendoza. With the invitation he sent them many mules laden with spirits and wine, with sweetmeats, cloth, and glass beads for the women, horse gear and clothes for the men. In savage pomp they came; the warriors, followed by their women, rode up to the fort on the day appointed in full war costume, flourishing their long lances, and commenced proceedings by a sham fight in the Indian fashion, dashing at full speed round the fort, from whose walls a gun was fired every five minutes and was answered by Indian yells. Then the chiefs entered the fort and were told by San Martin that the Spaniards were foreigners who intended to rob them of their lands, their cattle, their women, and children; and that he desired to pass through their country with an army, to go by the Planchon and Portillo Passes to the country the other side of the mountains, there to destroy these Spaniards. The Indian chiefs listened to his request and granted him the permission he required, after which they, with their warriors, gave themselves up to an orgy which lasted eight days.
On the sixth day San Martin returned to Mendoza satisfied that the Indians, with their usual perfidy, would at once inform Marcó of his project, and took care that their information was confirmed by the agents of Marcó in Mendoza, who sent him despatches to the same purport, dictated by San Martin. At the same time San Martin advised the Government and his friend Guido that he had arranged with the Indians for supplies of cattle and horses, and for help in his expedition, without in any case giving a hint of his real intentions.
Marcó, harassed by the alarming news sent him by his supposed spies in Mendoza, and annoyed by the guerillas under Martin Rodriguez, who infested the country between the Maule and the Maipó, and sacked villages even in the vicinity of the capital itself, adopted most ill-conceived and contradictory measures. He fortified the ports and organised a flotilla to act against an imaginary naval force, which his spies in Cuyo informed him had already left Buenos Ayres. He cut trenches in the pass of Uspallata; made a map of the southern provinces, and a survey of the mouths of the passes in that district; strengthened the guards at all the passes; after concentrating his troops, scattered them again all over the country; and followed the example of San Martin by holding a great conference with the Indians of Arauco.
The policy of San Martin was successful; the Captain-General of Chile attempted to defend the whole of his frontier and had no idea where the real attack was to come from. One only of his many councillors advised him to concentrate the army on the capital, and there make ready for whatever might happen. Instead of that, he increased the general discontent by arbitrary exactions, till all classes of the people longed for the appearance of San Martin and made ready to help him as best they could. Small parties of troops were on several occasions attacked and routed by armed bands of the peasantry, and the bandit Neyra made himself famous by similar exploits.