IN A MEXICAN PRISON.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 November 1916, Page 7

IN A MEXICAN PRISON.

ENGLISHMAN'S TWO YEARS OF HORROR. Remarkable experiences in Mexico are leiated by Mr. Michael Egan in letters from America to his home in Coalville, Leicestershire. For two year, nothing had been heard of him, and his friends had thouylit him dead. lie says that in 1009 be drifted into Old Mexico, and was doing well when tlie lirst revolution broke out. The camp was raided and burnt down, and he, with a dozen, or so Americans, Englishmen and Scotsmen was given his chance of being shot or joining the revolutionaries. They chose to join the revolutionaries, thinking they might get near to the border and escape into the United States. They travelled around for two years or more, raiding and destroying anything that could be' of use to the Government, but never got any nearer than 200 miles to the American border. Ono night in 1011 he and his comrades were surrounded by Government troops, and, being outnumbered by 10 to one, they surrendered. The Mexicans were shot as traitors, and the foreign element were thrown into a military prison in Mexico City. There they lay for nearly two years, until the. fall of, the Madero Government, when they were released on condition that they agreed to serve the new Government. The ■confinement and starvation, however, had heen too much for ten of the number. The rest were mere skeletons, and so weak that they. could scarcely stand. At length they were sent to u garrison town, where they deserted, and got back to the States about three months after the European w«ar broke out. "There were hundreds of times in the space of those two years in" prison I j. would gladly have taken the chance of a Mexican bullet in preference to what U ha,d to endure," he says,