the 1st Light Infantry under Lieutenant-Colonel Alvarado. A fifth squadron under Necochea was added to the Grenadiers. Thus early in September the army numbered 2,300 men with the flags, a force still insufficient for the work, but recruiting went on briskly.
The question of giving freedom to all slaves who would enlist being under discussion at Tucuman, San Martin spread the report in Cuyo that the idea was to be carried out, and advised the Cabildos to prevail upon the slave-owners to set their slaves free before the project became law. There was much unwillingness to accede to this proposition, but at length it was resolved to set two-thirds of the slaves free, the manumission not to be effective until the army crossed the Andes. This gave a further reinforcement of 710 men to the infantry. Before the end of the year the army numbered 4,000 men, almost all of whom were Argentines. The Chilian emigrants were organized into a reserve as the nucleus for the future army of Chile. This reserve was placed under command of O'Higgins, who received a commission as a General of the United Provinces, but within it were many partizans of Carrera, upon whom San Martin looked with suspicion.
This army was sustained by a combination of patriotic subscriptions, gratuitous services, and of regular and arbitrary taxes. Some carried arms, others gave money or labour, all the inhabitants of Cuyo contributed in some way or another to the great work. For the furnishing of arms, powder and, equipments, special measures were adopted. San Martin found the man he wanted for this work in a mendicant friar named Luis Beltran. This Beltran was a native of Mendoza, and being in Chile at the time of the revolution had joined the Patriots and served as an artilleryman at the siege of Chillán. After Rancagua he returned on foot to his own country, with a bag of tools of his own making on his shoulders. Self-taught, he was at once a mathematician and a chemist, an artilleryman and a maker of watches or of fireworks, a
