SECULAR

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 43.

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—Copious showers of rain fell last week throughout California.

—San Quentin, one of California’s State Prisons, has 1,200 prisoners.

—A retail liquor license in Fulton County, Ga., now costs $2,500.

—President Cleveland has proclaimed November 26 a day for thanksgiving and prayer.

—A nine-year-old girl took the first prize for oil paintings at the recent fair at Los Angeles, Cal.

—The expenses of the Canadian Government this year will be $35,300,000, and the revenues only $33,000,000.

—From little over thirty tons of ore from the Oro Fino mine, in Owyhee County, Idaho, $27,000 were lately extracted.

—A cyclone struck the village of Brownsville, Sumpter County, Ala., October 6, and almost totally destroyed the town, but killed no one.

—The recommendation of the pope that Spain be allowed control of the Carolinas, is understood to be accepted with some slight modifications.

—Dirty streets, unclean water, neglected sewers, and anti-vaccination ideas are said to be the causes of the visitation of small-pox in Montreal.

—In the past fifteen years the British Government has expended $217,000,000 upon its navy, and since 1867 the German navy has cost $140,000,000.

—October 5, a cyclone passed ten miles south of Dangerfield, Texas, and blew down the house of Hard R. Pitman, killing Pitman, his wife, and four children.

—A strike of considerable magnitude was started last week by the Knights of Labor, among the long-shoremen and employees of the railroads at Galveston, Texas.

—A monster cannon has just been cast at Boston, Mass., weighing about 100 tons. With a charge of 265 pounds of powder, it will throw an 800-pound projectile.

—The cathedral of Moscow, intended to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon I., has just been completed after the labor of fifty years, and at a cost of $10,000,000.

—The Chinese are engaging in the retail grocery business at Augusta, Ga., so numerously that the native dealers have petitioned the city government to “abate the nuisance.”

—The Gilroy Record states that it has positive knowledge that certain parties are shipping diseased beef to the San Francisco market. The matter is to be laid before the grand jury for investigation.

—The Englishman with his Chinese wife and six children, denied admittance at San Francisco, arrived at Victoria, B. C., October 5, and was admitted on the payment of $50 head tax on his wife and each child.

—Atchison, Kan., arrests her saloon-keepers once a month and fines them $25 each, and permits them to go on with their business until the time comes when another fine of $25 is due. This is equal to a license of $300 a year.

—It is claimed that the General Land Office at Washington has received sufficient evidence of land frauds in Utah, dating from Brigham Young’s administration, to cause the annulment of fraudulent titles to about 30,000 acres in Cache Valley.

—At a meeting, November 5, of about fifty of the leading and influential citizens of St. Louis, resolutions were passed favoring the building of a ship-railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, according to plans proposed by Capt. James B. Eads.

—Alexander Ramsey, Chairman of the Utah Commission, reports eighty-three arrests for polygamy, twenty-three convictions, and forty-three cases where the trial is pending; he also warns the Government against putting confidence in any rumor of change for the better taking place among Mormons.

—The business of raising ostriches for their feathers has been commenced at Anaheim, Cal. About two years and a half ago twenty-one adult ostriches were brought from South Africa. There are now sixty-one birds, twenty of the old ones (one having been kicked to death by its mate) and forty-one natives.

—Last week Capt. R. Bussius, in the mail service of the North German Lloyd Line, completed his eleven-hundredth trip across the Atlantic Ocean. The captain has conveyed 60,000 passengers across the ocean in safety, and upon his arrival at Southampton, he was presented with an appropriate medal by the German Consul.

—A correspondent of the Christian Union, writing from Monastir, Macedonia, where brigandage flourishes and is carried on systematically and boldly, says: “These things are so common that no one seems to be disturbed, save the victims. I am assured that the number of men in this city is not small who dare not go out of it a distance of two or three miles.”

—A conspiracy was formed some time since to dethrone Prince Alexander, and unite Bulgaria, eastern Roumelia, old Servia, and Macedonia, under one sceptre. The conspiracy was recently discovered and six of the conspirators were arrested. While Servia with but one-eighth of the territory California has, is supporting a standing army of 210,000, and Bulgaria with but a very little larger territory is supporting an army of 52,000, there is not much hopes of peace.

—Watson C. Squire, Governor of Washington Territory, recently addressed a proclamation to the people of that Territory, warning them not to molest the Chinamen, and calling on all good citizens to aid in carrying out the laws. The above proclamation was undoubtedly issued in view of the recent action of the people of Tacoma, where the Chinese were driven from town, and in anticipation of trouble of a similar character at Seattle, W. T. The President has issued a similar proclamation.