ITEMS OF NEWS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 6.

Read the full edition

ITEMS OF NEWS.

By Editor

—Oakland has a branch Land League.

—The public schools of the United States cost $80,529,000 a year.

—The king of Ashantee has declared another war against England.

—A Sunday-school is to be formed in New York for the study of politics.

—Thomas Carlyle, the most prolific of British essayists, died Tuesday, Feb. 5.

—The severest rain-storm ever experienced in Utah, was reported last Saturday.

—Telegraphic communication between Mexico and the United States is soon to be opened.

—Seven hundred of Sitting Bull's band have now surrendered, and his power for mischief is broken.

—San Francisco is receiving a visit from the king of the Cannibal Islands, who is on a tour of the world.

—The rainfall at Shasta has been over forty inches since Jan. 25, and over ninety inches for the season.

—A "regular blizzard" is reported from Ottawa, Kansas, Feb. 2, with the thermometer twenty degrees below zero.

—From forty to fifty thousand men and boys are idle in Lancashire, England, owing to the universal strike of the colliers.

—Severe cold prevails throughout Mexico, and it is reported that several persons have been frozen to death at Pueblo and Matamoras.

—The success of the conservative Republicans in France means that the people sustain the government in enforcing the laws against the Jesuits.

—The loan of sixty million dollars which Greece has succeeded in securing, is to be spent entirely on the armament and mobilization of its national force.

—The consolidation of the Western Union, American Union, and Atlantic and Pacific telegraph companies, has been effected and officially announced.

—There are thirty Egyptian obelisks scattered throughout Europe at the present time. Rome has eleven, four of which are higher than the one in New York.

—The population of the United States and Territories is declared by the Superintendent of the census to be 50,152,866, and that of the States alone to be 49,369,595.

—Over fifty employes have been discharged since Campbell accepted the office of Comptroller of New York City, making a saving on the salary list of fifty thousand dollars.

—Feb. 6, a Portland, Oregon, dispatch stated that the Willamette river was twenty-three feet above low water mark, that it lacked only two feet of being over the front, and was gradually rising.

—The track of the Southern Pacific railroad is laid within twenty-one miles of El Paso. Connection will be made with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe road, eleven miles west of Deming.

—Several of the young ladies attending Moody's school at Brookfield, are native Indians, who are preparing to teach in their tribes. It is said that they stand high in their examinations.

—The damage done to the telegraph wires alone in New York City, during the storm of the 21st ult., is estimated at $100,000. Such a storm has not passed over that part of the Atlantic coast for years.

—Preparations are being made in Germany to celebrate Nov. 10, 1883, the four hundredth anniversary of Luther's birth. The central attraction will be at Wartburg, where he translated the Bible into German.

—A petition is in circulation, asking the President to pardon the Mussel Slough settlers who were convicted of resisting the U. S. Marshal, and sentenced to eight months' imprisonment and three hundred dollars' fine. Thousands of signatures are being obtained.

—About forty sets of designs have been received by the committee of the Raikes Memorial church, to be built at Gloucester, England. It was thought that the best memorial to the founder of Sunday-schools would be a church, which should be built in the city in which he lived and worked.

—Among other departures, it is proposed by the Regents of the University of New York State, to allow candidates for entrance to college to be examined at their home schools instead of at the colleges. This gives the timid, though well-prepared, candidate an equal chance with the half-fitted, but bolder and more adroit youth.

—The statistics of a large city are always interesting. Those of New York last year show that there were 31,841 births, an increase of 3,499 over 1879, and 27,493 deaths, a gain of 1,920. The ravages of diphtheria have been marked, the number of deaths from this disease being 1,433, an increase of 762 over 1879.

—Preparation for the International Exhibition of 1883 has just taken a new start. Inwood, some twelve miles from the Battery, has been chosen as its site. It is accessible by land and water, by railway and steamboat. General Grant stands at the head of the Commissioners, and several of the great railroad magnates are on the committees.

—It is quite possible that the arrest of Michael Davitt, one of the leading Land Leaguers, will have the effect of quieting Ireland. Davitt has been boldly preaching resistance to the law in force though liable to be picked up and put in jail at any time, to serve out a balance of over four years, being merely at large on a ticket-of-leave during good behavior.

—The small-pox has been making sad havoc in the Jefferson Union settlement about twelve miles from Sioux City, Dakota. It is thought to have been communicated by a party of Russian Mennonites, who passed through the town several weeks ago. The people, mostly Canadian French, unmindful or ignorant of the contagious character of the disease, at first held public funerals, which were attended by all the settlers, as they are really of a kin. Of the ninety cases, thirty-three have been fatal. A strict quarantine has been established.

—Preparations are being made by nearly all the countries of Europe and by America for a regular Arctic siege, to begin in 1882. Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, the United States, and we believe Canada, are all to take part in this great work by establishing observing stations at suitable points all around the Polar area; while Italy is to send out next year a scientifically equipped expedition to the Antarctic region, our knowledge of which is meager and uncertain. This last will really be an observing as well as an exploring expedition, preparatory to the establishment of an Antarctic station.

—"The slave trade in Africa," says the Christian Union, "is still enormous. Dr. Livingstone estimated the traffic for all Africa at half a million yearly. Col. Gordon puts the loss of life in the Soudan alone at 30,000 to 50,000 annually. Raouf Pasha, who was left to carry out the work begun by Col. Gordon for the suppression of the slave trade, is proving its active abettor, and the iniquity is encouraged by the Egyptian government. The sale and purchase of human beings continues to be practiced on a large scale in the Hedgey, Yemen, Nubia, Abyssinia, and at various points on the coast. Men, women, and children, are sold as beasts of burden."