News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 6, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 14.

Read the full edition

News and Notes.

By Editor

—Maryland now has a law to punish wife-beaters with forty lashes.

—It is expected that the United States debt will show a reduction for March of over $16,000,000.

—General Hurlbut, late United States Minister to Peru, died of heart disease at Lima, March 28th.

—Cornelius J. Vanderbilt, brother of Wm. H. Vanderbilt, committed suicide in New York, on the 2d inst.

—The Dakota Insane Asylum, at Yankton, was destroyed by fire, April 2d, and four of the inmates were burned to death.

—The Senate Committee on Territories has reported back the bill for the admission of Dakota, with a recommendation for its passage.

—The Main-street station of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railway, at Buffalo, N. Y., was struck by lightning and burned, April 2d.

—Walker Hall, the finest of the Amherst College buildings, was burned March 29th. The hall and its choice contents were valued at a quarter of a million.

—Considerable excitement has been caused by the recent rich development of quartz gold, near Shasta, Cal. The quartz in one ledge is said to be nearly all gold.

—One of the men convicted of train wrecking on the Central Pacific Railroad, near Auburn, Cal., has been sentenced to thirteen years in the State Prison, at San Quentin.

—Last year, New York City spent $4,000,000 for educational purposes. This is a large sum, but it looks small beside the $7,000,000 spent for amusements, and the $60,000,000 for wines and liquors.

—Only one of the persons condemned to death at the late Nihilist trial in St. Petersburg, has been executed. The rest have had their sentences commuted by the Czar to an indefinite period of hard labor in the mines.

—Public feeling in England is increasingly hostile to the Channel Tunnel project, and Parliament is liable to put a stop to the work at any time. It is the opinion of eminent geologists that the work is impossible anyway.

—General Streinkoff, the public prosecutor of the Keiff military tribunal, was assassinated by Nihilists, at Odessa, March 31st. Two of the assassins were arrested immediately, and the Czar gave orders for their immediate execution.

—The coroner's jury held an inquest on the bodies of the men killed by the recent powder explosion near Oakland, and find that the powder is perfectly harmless, and that nobody was to blame. There is, therefore, nothing to be done except to wait for another explosion.

—Reports from Montreal state that it is estimated that the emigration from England to Manitoba will average 1,000 a week during April. The people are pouring into Winnepeg at the rate of 600 per day, and churches and public halls are being thrown open to accommodate the crowds.

—The country near Monroe, La., was devastated by a hurricane, March 28th. Several persons were killed. The damage to property was about $25,000. The same day, a cyclone passed through the southeastern part of Alabama, doing great damage to property, and killing and wounding many persons.

—All trains on the Central Pacific Railroad were delayed nearly the whole of last week, owing to washouts, caused by the melting of snow in the mountains. Near Humboldt Wells, Nevada, the road was under water for twenty miles. Nothing like the present freshets have been known before in the fourteen years during which the road has been in operation.

—The trial of a notorious stage robber has just been concluded at Santa Barbara, Cal. He was charged with robbing Wells, Fargo & Co.'s stage. He conducted his own case, and justified his robbery on the ground that the express company was engaged in an illegal business, and that it could be no crime to steal from them. The jury disagreed with him, and found him guilty, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life.

—A serious strike occurred recently at Barcelona, Spain, and other towns opposed to the changes in the tariff, and all works were closed. The feeling was intense that a revolution was threatened. During the disorders, cries of "Long live the Federal Republic," were raised. Order has been restored, but the demonstration shows that the kingdom of Spain, like other European monarchies, is not on the most secure foundation possible.

—The Mississippi steamer Golden City, when approaching the wharf at Memphis, Tenn., on the morning of the 30th ult., was seen to be on fire. The swiftness of the stream made it impossible to land, and she floated down stream, burning very rapidly, and sunk about three miles below the city, in twenty-five feet of water. Twenty-five lives are said to have been lost. The fire was due to the carelessness of one of the crew, who dropped a lamp on a part of the cargo of jute. All hope of recovering the dead bodies from the wreck has been abandoned. No further attempt will be made until the river falls sufficiently to permit the divers to work with some show of success.