Page:A history of Chile.djvu/459

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CHILE OF TO-DAY 413 racks. There are the Escuela Militar, Academia de Guerra, an institute of military engineers, which sends out oificers to travel in Europe to gain knowledge of military matters, a military club, and a military journal subsidized by the state. The army on a peace footing consists of five thousand eight hundred and eighty-five men, distributed as follows: two regiments of artillery, one battalion of sappers and miners, eight battalions of infantry, three regiments of cavalry and one battalion of coast artillery of five hundred men. There are in active service nine hundred and forty-three officers, twelve generals, twenty-nine colonels, seventy-six lieu- tenant-colonels and eight hundred and twenty-six infe- rior officers. The National Guard {Guardia Nacional Sedentaria), consists of 8,970 artillerymen, and 42,120 infantry. This force can be called upon in the event of war. The Chilean navy is the pride of the government and people. It consists now of a monitor, four ironclads, three corvettes, two gunboats and several transports, dispatch and sailing vessels. The ironclads, "Almiraiite Cochrane" and "Blanco Encalada, " which figured prom- inently in the late war with Peru, were built at Hull in 1875. They each had 3,500 tons displacement, 2, goo horsepower and nine inch armor. The "Cochrane" had four eighteen-ton and two, seven and one-half- ton guns; the "Blanco Encalada, " which was sunk by a torpedo-catcher in the late war, had six twelve and one-half-ton guns carried in a central battery.* The ironclad "Huascar, " captured from the Peruvians, was built in 1865; displacement 2,000 tons, horsepower 1,050, armor four and one-half inches, armed with two turret and two forty-pounder guns. The protected '■■The contract has been let for raising this vessel and putting it again into ser- vice.