The Washington times., 1920-02-08

"Grngo meat is good for slligators"
The rebel camp situated tract bounded by
three rivers which literally swarmed with algators 81
never imagined there could be many in the world"
saws Mrs Sturgis "Some of them veritable mon
sters and all along the river bank they lay and summed
themselves Now and then one Of them would drag its
scaly length to the waters edge and slump il"
When, after eight months in captivity Mrs. Sturgis
and her husband were released they trudged forty miles
over hill and dale the plantation which had been theirs
to find their home looted to the baroness of a bone
On the journey they in the middle Of the trail
ahead Of them female jaguar accompanied by a
young cub
eve shall be eaten!" exclaimed Mrs Sturgis panic
stricken.
Don't worry replied her husband "The beast
won't touch u.s. There is nothing on our bones worth
the picking
In describing her experiences before committee of
Congress the other day Mrs Charles Sturgs wife Of the
owner Of plantation called La Blanca, in the State of
Chiapas Mexico refraned from going into these minor
yet interesting details Many other things presently to
be reced she did tell contentng herself with giving
an account Of the robbng of the estate by Carranzas
troops brutal abuse which she and her family
subjected and the subsequent kidnapping of herself her
husband and her mother by rebel Zapatstas who held
them in captivity and subjected them to dreadful suffer-
ngs, the mother dying of starvation.
The husband Dr. Sturg1s. Is Dy profession dentlst
Many years ago he Mexico practise and in that
country travelled about from place to another filling
teeth and extracting them His office migratory and
peripatetc and he carried his instruments and materials
In q couple of grips.
Il was very profitable business and he made money;
for there are few skilled dentists in Mexico and fees
were correspondngy high. Having accumulated mod
est fortune he bought the plantation called La Blanca
comprising 5000 in the State of Chiapas which,
glance map will show is in the extreme south of
Mexico.
Paying not long afterward visit to the United States,
he met in Washington young lady, daughter OF an old
Virginia family named Cora Lee Keenright. That
fourteen years ago. He married her. took her back to
Mexico with him and they went to live the plantation
The doctor gave the practise of his
occasional charitable toothpung for natives in the
neighborhood-and became planter.
The plantation is in the temperate zone and the eli
mate delightful resembling that Of Los Angeles The
region is mountainous, and within sight of the fine blue
stone residence which the Surgses built for themselves
with native labor is magnificent cataract that falls two
hundred feet into the valley.
The chief products of the estate sugarcane and
coffee The Surgises made sugar and distilled from the
molasses highly encouraging beverage called aguar-
diente," for which there profitable demand They
raised CATTLE goats horses mules and poultry and there
money also in the fruit crops Strawberries rpened
all the year round.
This preliminary description of the plantation as it
in happier times is necessary to apprecative
understanding of the mischefs and horrors that followed
and which initiated not by rebels but by Federas
undoubtedly acting under the orders of Carranza himself
The Sturgses and their people had been safe under
Diaz. They unmolested under Madero, whom the
natives loved They had no trouble with Huerta indeed
they neither knew heard much about him.
But let Mrs. Sturgis herself tell the story:
"In 1916"
she