CHAPTER XXXI.
THE EXPEDITION TO THE SOUTH.
1821.
Cochrane, having failed to persuade San Martin to undertake active operations against Lima, and not content with the role imposed upon him of simply blockading Callao, set his fertile brain to work to devise some means of capturing these fortifications.
San Martin entered heartily into his plans, and by means of his secret agents opened communications with some of the subordinate officers of the fortress, and placed Miller with 550 men under the orders of the Admiral.
Nails, made in Lima for the purpose, were distributed among the conspirators, who were to spike the guns when an attack was made on the northern forts; a part of the garrison was bought over, and false keys were made to open the gates; but the Viceroy, who seemed to be quite as well served by his spies as San Martin was by his, took measures to circumvent these plans, so nothing was attempted.
Cochrane then proposed, with a small force of infantry moved rapidly by sea from place to place, to wear out the Royalist army by continual marchings to and fro; and San Martin at last resolved to send an expedition to the South, to co-operate with the movements of Arenales in the Highlands. Six hundred picked infantry and eighty
