General Diaz refused reconciliation with this government, and, fearing trouble before the next presidential election, for Lerdo was an active candidate, he sold his estate and left for the United States after a “_pronunciamento_,” called the “Plan of Tuxtepec,” had been issued to which he gave his allegiance, if he was not the author of it. This “plan” declared a president ineligible to succeed himself. By the time the revolution was well underway in several states, General Diaz had crossed the Rio Grande at Brownsville, Texas, with forty followers. These forty men increased to four hundred in a few days and they captured Matamoros on April 2nd, 1876. Learning that a large force had been sent after him, General Diaz decided to return south. He went to New Orleans and took a steamer from there, called the City of Habana, sailing for Vera Cruz, and passed himself off as a Cuban doctor. He was not suspected until some of the troops he had captured at Matamoros a few weeks before got on board the ship at Tampico. They immediately made arrangements to secure him on arriving at Vera Cruz. Although the ship was four miles from land, Diaz jumped overboard and attempted to swim ashore. He was picked up after nightfall in an exhausted condition, and taken on board the ship again. However the purser was won to his cause and concealed him in a wardrobe, where he remained for several days on a diet of ship’s biscuit and water. The purser, as a matter of policy and in order to disarm all suspicion, invited the Lerdist officers into his cabin, where they would spend hours in playing at cards. Oftentimes the chair of the one sitting in front of the wardrobe would be tilted back against the door behind which was the man they would have given almost anything to catch. From his cramped position General Diaz was in torment. He could not stand upright, nor was he able to sit down. When the _City of Habana_ arrived at Vera Cruz the chief of the coast guard service, who was the fugitive’s friend, managed to smuggle in to him a dilapidated sailor’s suit and a very old pair of boots. At the same time the chief sent word that a rowboat, in charge of a man he would recognize by certain signals, would come alongside for him. When the ship began to unload bales of cotton into barges, this boat appeared among them, and the noted prisoner made his escape to land.