Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/166

136 at his appointed task, and all trusted blindly in their chief. The forges blazed day and night, the arsenal turned out cartridges by the hundred thousand. Fray Beltran made special carriages for the artillery, adapted to the mountain passes, the guns themselves were to be carried on the backs of mules; slings were prepared for carrying them over dangerous places, and sleds of raw hide in which they might be hauled up by men when the gradients were too steep for the mules.

The General-in-Chief, silent and reserved, thought for all, inspected everything, and provided for every contingency. Large provision was made of charquicán, a food much in vogue among the muleteers, composed of beef dried in the sun, roasted, and ground to powder, then mixed with fat and Chile pepper and pounded into small compass. A soldier could carry enough of this in his knapsack to last him eight days. Mixed up with hot water and maize meal ready roasted, it formed a soup at once nutritious and appetising. San Luis alone furnished 2,000 arrobas, and the total provision amounted to 3,500 arrobas (87,200 lbs.). The soldiers made for themselves closed sandals of raw hide called tamangos, which were lined with fragments of old clothes collected for that purpose from all the province. Water-bottles were made from the horns of the animals slaughtered in the encampment, and slings were made for them out of the rough edges of the cloth from which their uniforms were made. The sabres of the cavalry were carefully sharpened, but they had only three trumpets till Government sent them two more. Thirty thousand horseshoes were prepared, which was a great innovation, as the Argentines were not accustomed to shoe their horses; without them the hoofs of the cavalry horses would have been worn down in the transit over the stony passes. Four cables, each 170 feet long, and two anchors formed a portable bridge. Cuyo alone furnished 13,000 mules, but the promises of Government to replenish the exhausted treasury were not fulfilled. A rebellion had broken out in Cordoba which taxed the