severely punished and all the people were oppressed.

In this depressed state of Chilian affairs a hero came across the
mountains to strike a new blow for liberty. Don Jose de San Martin had
fought valiantly for the independence of Buenos Ayres at the battle of San
Lorenzo. Now the Argentine patriots sent him to the aid of their
fellow-patriots in Chili and Peru. Such was the state of the conflict in
the latter part of 1816, when San Martin, collecting the scattered bands
of Chilian troops and adding them to men of his own command, got together
a formidable array five thousand strong. The "Liberating Army of the
Andes" these were called.

An able organizer was San Martin, and he put his men through a thorough
course of discipline. Those he most depended on were the cavalry, a force
made up of the _Gauchos_, or cattlemen of the Pampas, whose life was
passed in the saddle, and who were genuine centaurs of the plains.

San Martin had the Andes to cross with his army, and this was a task like
that which Hannibal and Bonaparte had accomplished in the Alps. He set out
himself at the head of his cavalry on the 17th of January, 1817, the
infantry and artillery advancing by a different route. The men of the army
carried their own food, consisting of dried meat and parched corn, and
depots of food were established at intervals along the route, the
difficulty of transporting provision-trains being thus avoided. The
field-pieces were slung between mules or dragged on sledges made of tough
hide, and were hoisted or lowered by derricks, when steep places were
reached. Some two thousand cattle were driven along to add to their food
supply.

Thus equipped, San Martin's army set out on its difficult passage of the
snow-topped Andes. He had previously sent over guerilla bands whose active
movements thoroughly deceived the royalist generals as to his intended
place of crossing. Onward went the cavalry, spurred to extraordinary
exertion by the fact that provisions began to run short. The passes to be
traversed, thirteen thousand feet high and white with perpetual snow,
formed a frightful route for the horsemen of the plains, yet they pushed
on over the rugged mountains, with their yawning precipices, so rapidly as
to cover three hundred miles in thirteen days. The infantry advanced with
equal fortitude and energy, and early in February the combined forces
descended the mountains and struck the royalist army at the foot with such
energ