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134 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,