Notes of News | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 53, No. 5.

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Notes of News.

The cotton crop for 1878, in round numbers, is 5,197,000 bales,—450 pounds to a bale.

It is feared that a general commercial collapse is imminent in Sweden.

The Southern war claim is eliciting warm discussion in the House of Representatives.

Another wonderful cave has recently been discovered near Glasgow Junction, Ky.

Severe cold weather, and suffering from destitution, continue in Great Britain.

The investigation of election frauds in Florida is bringing to light some barefaced and astounding frauds.

Violent snowstorms block the Russian railways. 7,000 laborers are opening communications between Moscow and Sebastopol.

India now exports 40,000,000 pounds of tea; previous to 1840 no tea was exported from that country.

The Bible has been translated complete into the Turkish language. There are 28,000,000 people in Turkey.

According to a Glasgow paper, over 3,300 of the 6,400 men belonging to the various building trades in that city, are out of employment.

A writer in the Republique Francaise claims that the publishing house of Hachette & Co., at Paris, is the largest in the world.

The pope is about to fill the vacancies in the Sacred College by the appointment of twelve new cardinals.

There are rumors, apparently well-founded, that Queen Victoria is seriously thinking of abdicating the throne of Great Britain in favor of the Prince of Wales.

There are over 25,000 flour mills in this country, in which over 60,000 men are employed at annual wages of over $20,000,000; these mills turn out yearly about 50,000,000 barrels of flour.

The normal amount of arrearage in benevolent society receipts seems to be $30,000. The Home Missionary Society has hovered about this sum for two or three years.

The Board of Indian Commissioners estimate the number of Indians in the United States at 250,000, and report that of this number 127,458 wear citizen’s dress.

It is said that Shere Ali will remain in Tash-kend. The Golos, of St. Petersburg, says that England now has control of Afghanistan, and has every chance for carrying out her plans in Asiatic Turkey.

The bones of St. Francis Xavier are deposited at Goa, India, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in that country; 300 bishops and 100,000 more of the faithful are organizing for a pilgrimage to view the bones.

More than half of all the letters mailed in the world are written in English. The 100,000,000 who speak the English language have far more books and newspapers than all the other 1,200,000,000 of the earth.

The different nations of Europe are discussing the propriety of taking measures to prevent the spread of the plague that recently broke out in Russia. Germany and Austria have resolved to send physicians to watch the epidemic.

Yakoub Bey’s old kingdom of Kashghar is again in a state of turmoil. It was recently conquered by the Chinese; but according to Russian reports, the Mohammedan rebels outnumber the Chinese army of occupation. This is the army that was to cross the mountains into Russian territory.

Owing to the influx of Northern people and capital, the prospects of continued and increasing prosperity in Georgia were never more encouraging than now. The annual product of the gold mines has increased from $40,000 a year 4 years ago to $500,000. The turpentine, lumber, and other interests have also increased.

The land in Great Britain is owned by comparatively few persons. Of the 37,243,857 acres in England and Wales, 280 persons own 5,425,764, or about one-seventh. In Ireland, 744 persons own 9,612,728 acres, or nearly half of its 20,150,678 acres. In Scotland, 24 persons own more than a fourth of the whole area, and 70 own 9,400,000 acres, or about half of its 18,946,694 acres. One man owns 1,358,548 acres, and five others own each, from 306,000 to 431,000 acres.

A two month’s preaching in Perlepe, near Monastir, European Turkey, has set the whole city by the ears. “Your work is of the devil!” exclaimed an excited man. “Why?” asked the missionary. “Ten weeks ago,” he replied, “we in this city were united, and were of one faith and mind; but now half are for your faith and half for the orthodox (Greek) faith, and we are just this way!” (at the same time striking his fists together). Jesus said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

The Euphrates railway is very much needed, and somehow England has got to build it; but the statement that England offers to guarantee to the Turkish Government a loan of $125,000,000 in return for a concession by which England gains the right to build the railway and to hold five acres of land on every mile of the railway, and to establish on land granted for the purpose a colony of 100,000 Europeans, and also to hold the revenues of Bassora, Bagdad, and Damascus, to guarantee the loan, is startling. Should the Porte agree to this offer, we should be having British influence predominant indeed in Asiatic Turkey, and responsible for its good order.

“The engineering projects of modern times,” says the Christian Weekly, “are often startling by their originality and boldness. Not the least in these respects is the one which proposes to avert future visitations of yellow fever from New Orleans by turning that city into another Venice, removing the dykes which prevent the Mississippi from overflowing it, and letting the water from the river flow through its streets. Of course, the city would have to be lifted bodily, as Chicago was, but it is contended that its health would be assured.”

“It is an understood fact,” says the London Christian World, “that the blood spilt and the treasure expended in this Afghan war are due to England’s being governed by a most fanciful novelist, and India being administered by a flighty poet. To those two men,—more to Lord Lytton than to Lord Beaconsfield, yet essentially to both,—must we impute it that, on the edge of an Afghan winter, British troops are posted on high hills, with the thermometer 7° above zero, and that wild highlanders,—men, women, children—of the Suleiman range, see their villages gloriously laid in ashes by an English army.”

The attempt to force by starvation and freezing the Cheyenne Indians, prisoners at Fort Robinson, Neb., to consent to go to the Indian Territory, was a miserable failure, as it deserved to be. The freezing and starvation argument was applied to women and children. The Indians, stung by the sense of the wrong, became desperate, overcame the guards, killing and wounding several, and escaped. The soldiers overtook them and killed twenty, twelve of whom were women and children. At latest accounts forty Indians had been killed, fifteen wounded, and fifty recaptured. Four soldiers were killed and four wounded. Fifty Indians are still at large. A relative of Red Cloud was killed and a sister of one of his chiefs was wounded, and, as the escaped Indians are likely to take refuge in Red Cloud’s or Spotted Tail’s camp, it is more than probable that they will stir up bad blood among those Indians. The whole matter affords a striking commentary on the way in which Indian affairs may be expected to be managed by the military—if put entirely under the control of the army.—The Advance.