SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 11.

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SECULAR.

—Snow lies twelve feet deep at Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada.

—A fire at Utica, N. Y., on the 2d inst., destroyed property valued at $800,000.

—The City of Mexico is now connected with all parts of the United States by railroad.

—The fire record in the United States for the past two months shows a loss of $19,000,000.

—Extensive mines of tin have been discovered in Harney Peak District, Black Hills, Dakota.

—A Nebraska City bar-keeper gives away a sack of flour to every purchaser of one hundred drinks.

—A cave in a shaft of the Prietas mines, Sonora, Mexico, two weeks ago, buried twenty miners hopelessly.

—The city of Los Angeles is again reported to be suffering from an overflow of the river, with great damage to property.

—On the 3d inst., John Glasscock of Delaplane, Va., murdered his wife and three children, and then shot himself through the heart.

—Men on snowshoes now carry the mails up to Moore's Flat, Graniteville, and other high mountain post-offices in the Sierra Nevada.

—Desire Roudoir has confessed that he killed Edward Grant at Grant's Falls, N. H., for which crime his father is now awaiting sentence.

—The Nevada Live-stock Association, recently organized at Winnemucca, is to embrace Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah.

—A bill has passed the Senate providing that any West Point cadet who has once been dismissed for hazing shall be ineligible to reappointment.

—One hundred and fifty miners have been discharged from the mines at Cole City, Ga., to make room for a large invoice of convicts received.

—A recent affray in Roumelia, between railroad laborers and citizens of Presbe, resulted in the killing of eight and the wounding of fourteen persons.

—A negro named John Barnes, at Spartanburg, S. C., on the 28th ult., tied up his seven-year-old nephew and whipped him to death, because he did not get up when called.

—It is estimated that 369,000 people in the river counties of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois are more or less dependent upon charity for every necessity of life.

—The Senate has passed the bill appropriating $350,000 for a new post-office building in San Francisco. A city daily estimates that this sum will buy a site and lay the foundation.

—Governor Stoneman has issued a proclamation convening an extra session of the Legislature on the 24th inst. The subjects to be considered pertain to railroads and the public revenue.

—The German newspapers, referring to the dynamite outrages in London, say that England is now reaping the fruits of her hospitality to anarchists and cut-throats from all parts of the world.

—Cornwallis West, in a letter to the London Times, says: "The time has come for England to demand of friendly Governments protection from the attempts of O'Donovan Rossa and his bloodthirsty crew."

—Foote, the editor of the London Freethinker, has completed his year's imprisonment for blasphemy. Mr. Bradlaugh, with 2,000 sympathizers, met him at the gates of the prison as he came forth.

—The German Ministerial organs associate the alliance of Russia, Germany, and Austria with a coming league of Continental Powers against the maritime and commercial preponderance of England.

—J. G. Kennedy, Superintendent of schools at San Jose, Cal., shot and seriously wounded a noted capitalist named Daniel Bohen. The affair grew out of charges of corruption in the management of school affairs.

—American wine merchants and large hotels annually import 5,000,000 gallons of foreign wines, and sell 20,000,000 gallons. The balance is native wine under foreign labels, or manufactured out of something a great deal worse.

—The United States Government is pressing its claim against Spain for $493,000, balance of awards due on account of American losses during the rebellion in Cuba, and also for $6,000,000 for estates embargoed at the same period, and not restored to their American owners.

—The latest phase of legislation is a bill in the U. S. Senate to relieve the Judge-Advocate and members of the Fitz-John Porter Court-martial from the secrecy imposed by their oath as to the vote of the court. It is some consolation to know that there are yet a few public men whose integrity requires such a law.

—The floods continue to devastate the overland railroads. In the Sierra Nevada, and at Blue Creek, near Ogden, there are extensive washouts on the Central Pacific. The Southern Pacific line is in a still worse condition. On Mohave Desert, at Soledad Pass, and various other places along the route, there are disastrous breaches, which will delay regular travel and traffic for some time.

—HALIFAX, March 2.—The steamer Juliet from Newcastle, Eng., reports fearful storms and seas, revolving hurricanes, heavy fields of ice and innumerable icebergs. She sighted a two-masted steamer apparently hard and fast between two bergs, but could not make out her name. Later she passed an oil-cake or petroleum ship afire. The crew are believed to have been rescued by a passing ship.

—The new wharf of the San Francisco and Alameda ferry, on the Alameda side is a great work. It is two and a half miles from the shore at China Point, with which it is connected by a trestle-work on which is a double railroad track, a wagon road twenty feet wide, and a sidewalk for footmen. In the construction of the whole there were used 10,000 piles and 60,000,000 feet of lumber. The depot buildings are very substantial and commodious. The most wonderful feature is the fresh water supply. The immense tanks (60,000 gallons) are supplied from an artesian well sunk to a depth of 300 feet underneath sixteen feet of salt water, and flows at the rate of 100,000 gallons daily. The entire cost of the improvement was $700,000.

—A special to the Star from New London, Conn., of March 3d, says: E. D. Thrall, General Agent of the State Humane Society, has found at East Lynne a family, consisting of a man, wife and five children, the latter ranging from seven to thirteen years of age, the father beastly drunk and all the children in the same condition, one child being in the last stage of delirium tremens. A gray-headed old man of the same neighborhood was found to be forcing his thirteen-year-old boy to do the work of a grown man, denying him school privileges, and brutally beating him for the most trivial neglect of duty. A few days ago, for a trivial offense, the father had handcuffs forged for the boy's wrists and manacled him with a chain to a cow's horn. He then drove the cow and boy to a bleak hillside and left them together all day in the face of a cutting wintry gale.