News and Miscellany

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 3, 1874

News and Miscellany.

‘‘MEN'S hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.’’ Luke 21 : 26.

THE S. F. Chronicle of Nov. 10th, says: More fires—fires everywhere. Fire at Batesville, at New York, at Cincinnati, at Peoria, Ill., at Marcellus Falls, N. Y. Here are losses by fire, within a period of a single week, footing up at over $300,000.

Saturday night, Nov. 7th, fire at Wittsburg, Ark., loss $25,000. Nov. 11th, forest fires near Dixon, Tenn., and between Union City, Tenn., and Hickman, Ky. Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of property destroyed. Nov. 14th, heavy fires at Danville, Va. Loss $100,000. Nov. 19th, fire at St. Johns, N. B. Loss $40,000. Nov. 17th, fire at St. Louis, Mo. Loss $100,000; another Nov. 22nd. Loss $48,000. Nov. 22nd, fire at Syracuse, N. Y. Loss $130,000. Late dispatches report a fire in Manchester, England. Loss $750,000, and eight lives.

A dispatch from Washington, Nov. 15th, reports fires raging in every direction in the Dismal Swamp, destroying a large amount of valuable timber. The Indianapolis Sentinel, of Oct. 31st, states that forest fires were raging in every part of Indiana and Ohio; that the destruction to property was immense, footing up hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The S. F. Call says: ‘‘Another danger has been added to the many that beset the mariner at all times, in the fact that ten foreign, and seven American ships, have recently been lost by the spontaneous combustion of coal that formed their cargo.’’ These ships were all lost within the last three months. Five of them were bound for San Francisco. Nov. 22nd, two more coal ships reported burned at sea.

The S. F. Chronicle of Nov. 14th, says: Advices received from the Crimea, state that the drouth continues and causes much uneasiness. No rain has fallen for a considerable period, and the agricultural prospects are very depressing. The rivers have dried up, the vegetation over a large extent of country has been scorched and withered, and unless an abundant rain comes soon the crops will be ruined.

It is estimated that the people who have fallen victims to the famine in Asia Minor number over 150,000. In one village out of more than 1,600 sheep and goats, just one sheep and one goat remain, and of 100 cows two remain. In another, from a flock of 1,200 sheep and goats, eight are reported; and from another flock in the same village, numbering 800, the same number, eight, are reported.

A dispatch from Washington, Nov. 14th, says: The following telegram was received this morning at the Signal Office in this city, from the observer at Kingston, Jamaica: ‘‘Enormous damage has been done all over the Island by a hurricane on the 31st ult., and 1st and 2nd instants. It swept the parishes of St. Thomas, East Kingston, St. David, St. Ane's, Clarendon, Manchester, Portland, and Trelawney. The canes were blown down; the river rose six feet higher than ever before known; the coffee crops in Trelawney were seriously injured. The weather caused a general alarm. Enormous landslides have occurred; the roads and river-courses are blocked by huge trees; the iron bridges are even bent; and cattle and horses were swept into the sea. A dispatch dated Kingston, Jamaica, Nov. 15th says: ‘Sixteen vessels were driven ashore near here by the hurricane of the 1st inst.’’

A dispatch direct from Cuba, Nov. 12th, says: A most disastrous inundation has occurred at the village of Mayaria, which was overflowed for forty hours. Nearly all the houses within its limits were destroyed, entailing much suffering and destitution.

A dispatch from Buffalo, dated Nov. 6th, enumerates the names, cargoes, and loss of fourteen schooners and four propellers in a fog and gale in that vicinity, just prior to that date.

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Nov. 11th.—A heavy storm of rain has swept this end of the Island. Railroads are washed away, and large quantities of sugar cane all over the country are leveled. The towns of Sauna and Tonalo, on the North Coast, are flooded, and cattle, goods, and houses are swept away.

LONDON, Nov. 17th.—Rains have swollen the rivers and streams in Lancashire county, causing inundations. Much damage has been done.

TORNADO. Eastern dispatches of Nov. 23, state that a terrible storm and tornado had been prevailing for twenty-four hours, doing great damage in Alabama, and reaching as far up as Philadelphia and New York, unroofing houses and destroying much property and lives. The city of Tuscumbia, Alabama, was half blown down.

A Times correspondent at Bombay telegraphs that it is estimated that 2,000 persons were killed in the town and district of Midapoor during the recent cyclone.

The reports from Hong Kong, China, Oct. 6th, are that the typhoon there destroyed 2,000 lives, and damaged every ship in the harbor, and that ‘‘it exceeded everything of the kind that has ever before been placed on record.’’

LONDON, Nov. 20th.—A terrible explosion of fire damp occurred in a coal mine near Sheffield. Twenty killed and two more seriously injured.

An unusually heavy earthquake was felt in Chili, Oct. 26th. Its duration was thirty seconds, and the vibrations from east to west. It was the greatest one experienced since July of last year. The centre of the shock seemed to be at Valparaizo. Its effects were felt over a section of 1,500 square miles. Some dwellings and churches fell at Santiago. The alarm there was great. The temperature of the atmosphere arose 26 degrees. Vessels in the harbor felt the shock severely. There were lighter shocks and tremors of the earth for several days. There were two more heavy shocks of earthquake at Vera Cruz, Mexico, Nov. 13th, each lasting ten seconds. Several houses were destroyed.

THE GRASSHOPPER PLAGUE.—An officer sent from fort McPherson, Nebraska, to visit all sections of the grasshopper district, reports that relief must soon be given, or hundreds will starve before winter is half over. With in ten days many will be without a pound of corn or flour.

One graphic reporter describing the work of these grasshoppers, says: ‘‘Before swarms of ravenous grasshoppers the Nebraska and Kansas farmers retreat in dismay. An invading army of men is a merciful enemy compared to this remorseless insect. To-day everything is green and flourishing, and the farmer rejoices in the certainty of reward for his toil. To-morrow the sky is obscured as with a kind of haze, and the deadly hum salutes the farmer's ear. He is as powerless to avert the impending doom, as if he were one man among ten thousand. Nothing that is green escapes. A fire does not leave a prairie more desolate than a swarm of grasshoppers leaves a wheat field.’’

Reader, please open your Bible to Joel 1 : 2, 4; 2 : 4–11, 25. You will see Joel describes what is to be in the time just before ‘‘the day of the Lord’’—the coming of Christ. The faithful chronicler tells us what is taking place. A beginning, at least, of the work of Joel's ‘‘army.’’ (J. N. L.)

A correspondent of the Penn Yan, N. Y., Chronicle thus describes a new enemy of vegetation working in that quarter: ‘‘Several acres of forest have been denuded of leaves by a new insect pest, popularly called the ‘wood horse.’ This disgusting animal is from two to four inches long, is shaped something like a darning needle with four or five span-gled legs. He crawls, wriggles, climbs, and drops from the tree, but cannot fly.’’

Seventy thousand men are now said to be out of work in New York, and there is little likelihood that the prospects will change for the better during the winter.

A controversy of no small magnitude is going on in England between Gladstone and Archbishop Manning of the Romish church. Gladstone claims that no one can become a convert to Rome without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another. He declares that the Vatican Council established even a wider claim than infallibility, namely, of ‘‘absolute and entire obedience.’’ The Pall Mall Gazette thinks it is ‘‘none of Gladstone's concern whether Catholic principles lead to disloyalty or not.’’ This controversy does not augur well for the great Catholic Council called in England to make the Pope the arbiter of nations.

Religious riots have recently occurred at several points in Poland on account of the forcible introduction by the Government of Church reform, under which the appointment of Priests is made by Imperial authority. A number of newly appointed Priests have been maltreated by mobs. A number of the ringleaders have been arrested and imprisoned.

The republic of Venezuela is again in the midst of a general uprising against Guzman Blanco. The revolutionary forces number 4,000 strong.

We can only give a brief summary of the many perplexing topics now before the nations of the East.

There is complete anarchy in Khiva. A dispatch dated London, Nov. 17th, says: ‘‘The Russian advance posts on the Amu Dury report that Colonel Ivanhoff is preparing to cross the river with an armed force to punish the marauding tribes whom the Khan of Khiva was unable to control.’’

A great conspiracy has recently been discovered in Russia. The conspirators had attempted to take the life of the Czar. Over 3,000 persons were arrested for participating in this conspiracy, some of them ladies of high rank. Russia is about to formally recognize the Republican Government of Spain. The Russian Government has ordered eighteen iron clads for the Sea of Aral, and two steamers for service in the Amudury River. Prussia declines the proposition of Russia to renew the boundary line between the two countries.

The Carlists, the friends of the old Spanish Government, are very evidently losing ground. A telegram from Paris to London, Nov. 14, says: ‘‘Don Carlos' cause is utterly ruined, and his situation hopeless.’’ In the retreat of his forces from Irun, sixty of his men were frozen to death in the snow. The Carlists burned the houses of Republican sympathizers about Irun, and the heavy snow which has fallen finds the country populated with houseless women and children. The Republican troops followed the retreating Carlists, and burned the houses of Carlist Sympathizers. So there will be suffering on both sides.

Turkey is in trouble. Austria pays no attention to the demands of Turkey, but defies Turkey by concluding a commercial treaty with Roumania. The Porte asks, whether, through ‘‘this fresh blow at the treaty of Paris,’’ the day will not come ‘‘when human efforts will be powerless to stop the torrent let loose by successive violations of treaties.’’ The great Eastern question is being revived, ‘‘and,’’ say the public prints, ‘‘while Russia and Austria look with longing eyes upon the Turkish provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia, Turkey is clinging to the shreds of her dominion.’’