— A son of Li Hung Chang will enter the Harvard law school next fall.
— It is reported that heavy rains in India have somewhat improved the conditions there.
— The government of Haiti has adopted the gold standard, the unit of value being the American gold dollar.
— The Prohibition convention has nominated John G. Wooley for president, and Henry B. Metcalf for vice-president.
— The United States government has placed an order for more than twenty guns, for immediate shipment to the Orient. The Bethlehem Steel Company will make the guns.
— According to a Pretoria dispatch, “General Botha possesses full powers to conclude peace, and it is reiterated that he is willing to surrender; but it seems that President Kruger is obdurate.”
— The Postmaster General of the United States has issued an order removing from office Estes G. Rathbone, who was Director General of Posts of Cuba, and detailing Martin C. Fosnes, an inspector in the postal service, to perform the duties of the office until further orders.
— Drought has seriously damaged crops in Arizona.
— The war in China has caused an advance in the price of tea.
— Rear-Admiral Philip, commandant of the Brooklyn navy yard, is dead.
— It is said that the beach at Topkuk, Cape Nome, has yielded $400,000.
— Newport, R. I., will be the headquarters of the British embassy this summer.
— The Colombian revolution is at an end; the rebels are said to have lost over 4,500 men.
— Paul Kruger’s grandson has been taken to St. Helena, and is with General Cronje.
— Owing to continuous rains preventing sowing, the next wheat crop of Chile will be short.
— Baron Von Ketteler, German minister at Peking, was murdered by native troops, June 18.
— Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, conferred the degree of LL.D. on Senator Marcus A. Hanna.
— One thousand Indians are gathered at the mouth of Rainy River, Ontario, threatening an uprising.
— More than 10,000 deaths by cholera occurred in one week, in Bombay, and the famine situation in India remains unaltered.
— The last descendant of John Bunyan has just died in Lincoln, England. She was Mrs. T. M. Keyworth, and was ninety years old.
— A Shanghai dispatch says: “It is officially said that the dowager empress has issued emphatic instructions for the extermination of all foreigners in China.”
— Farmers near Altoona, Pa., will resist the effort of the Cambria Steel Company to erect a dam four miles long, fearing a repetition of the Johnstown type of disaster.
— General Aguino, a prominent insurgent leader, surrendered unconditionally to the Americans; and General Ricarte, who incited uprisings in Manila, was captured July 1.
— By the bursting of a reservoir at Grand Rapids, Mich., July 2, a section of the city three blocks long and two blocks wide, was swept by the flood, and great damage was done to property. No lives were lost.
— The New York Herald says that Li Hung Chang quietly made arrangements to leave China on the “Brooklyn,” but was prevented by an edict of the empress dowager. About 130 pirates have been beheaded by order of Li Hung Chang.
— President McKinley’s proclamation of amnesty was formally promulgated in the Philippines, by General MacArthur, June 21. It offers full pardon to all Filipinos who have resisted the authority of the United States, providing they “lay down their arms, and give an oath-bound promise to be loyal to the United States government.” It is said that “one class of insurgents is excepted from the offered amnesty; namely, those who have violated the rules of civilized warfare.”
— According to the Madrid correspondent of the London Express, “the Spanish press is becoming more and more suspicious in regard to Great Britain, which it accuses of planning to seize the Balearic and Canary Islands, as well as designing the conquest of the whole peninsula. The newspapers in Madrid claim that the iron ring which Great Britain has formed around Spain is getting gradually closer. British fleets are continually moving in Spanish waters near the coast, and in the bays of Galicia. The English fleet effected numerous soundings near the Balearic Islands. They also simulated various attacks on the islands, landing each time over 500 men, with artillery.”
— June 24, John Barrett, former United States minister to Siam, speaking of the Chinese situation, said: “In restoring peace in China the United States should be the principal influence to determine the future and the fate of China. It is America’s influence only that can successfully solve this problem, and keep China from an impending break-up. America must stand for the integrity of the Chinese Empire; for we have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by her partition among the European powers. On the other hand, if America allows China to be divided, the expansion of our commerce and the extent of our moral influence will be absolutely limited by the attitude and policy of European nations. Another interesting point is this: the United States is the only power whose leadership and dictation of policy Russia would accept.”
— Dispatches from Washington say that “the President and his cabinet are unanimously of the opinion that the time for promises on the part of the Chinese government has passed, and that it is the imperative duty of this government to put a force of men in China large enough to compel the protection of American missionaries and business men, and they are proceeding to perform that duty. The War Department fully realizes that the campaign in China may be long and arduous, and the necessary orders are being issued to forward all supplies that our troops may need, and it is significant that these orders include a plentiful supply of winter clothing and camping outfits. General Chaffee specially impressed it upon the minds of the War Department officials that the section of China in which our troops will operate has an early, and often a hard, winter.”
— The British troops won a victory over the Ashantis, near Dompoassi, after losing over ninety men.
— A Norwegian paper recently published a dispatch from Vardö, stating that Andree, the arctic explorer, is safe.
— The British and the Boers have had several sharp fights lately, General Methuen having captured 8,000 sheep and 500 cattle.
— Superintendent Frye, who is in charge of the public school system in Cuba, reports 1,878 primary schools, with 100,000 children in attendance.
— Owing to failure to agree on a wage scale, the officers of the American Tin Plate Company announce that a general shut-down of all their mills and plants will take place. Thirty-five thousand men will be affected.
— According to an Associated Press dispatch, “to all intents and purposes, the South African war, as far as the average Britisher is concerned, is over. With the exception of the possible capture of President Kruger and the home-coming of Lord Roberts, the calendar of probabilities contains nothing of vital interest. Already China has completely eclipsed South Africa as the burning question of the day. The capture of 500 members of the imperial yeomanry, which a few months ago would have thrown the nation into a fit of despondency, self-analysis, and furious abuse of its own officers, has passed comparatively unnoticed.”
— At about four o’clock in the afternoon, Saturday, June 30, an explosion occurred on one of the big ocean steamers of the German Lloyd Steamship Company lying at her dock, at the Hoboken piers, New York City. The fire from the explosion soon spread to two other large steamers of the same line, to a swarm of lighters, canal boats, and other craft in the neighborhood, and “in an incredibly brief time the whole river front was ablaze.” Three ocean liners—the “Saale,” the “Bremen,” and the “Main”—and over twenty smaller vessels were destroyed by the fire. From 150 to 300 persons perished. Property damage will not be less than $7,000,000.
— In a letter recently written to the Detroit Christian Herald, from Paris, France, Mr. C. A. Snow says: “I learn that there will be no congress of religions such as was held at Chicago, but there is on the program ‘L’Histoire des Religions,’ to be discussed from the 3d to the 8th of September, inclusive; and this will doubtless bring up the subject in its breadth. There will be no participation by the Roman Catholics. As the very intelligent Frenchman M. Emile Bourgeois, of the office of the secretary-general, said: ‘The Catholics do not like discussion.’ For reasons of policy the Catholics took a part in the Chicago symposium. It had to be done, or the utter unfitness of the church for intelligent modern humanity and Christianity would have been accentuated in a way seriously to injure this great politico-religious organization in the United States; but there was an entre nous [betwixt us] understanding between the American hierarchy and the Vatican, that the fraternization of Cardinal Gibbons and others, at Chicago, was for effect, and their levity on this occasion did not in the least affect the ancient policy of Rome. Indeed, it was quickly followed by a repressive and retrogressive encyclical from the pope, and a reaction against ‘Americanism.’ There is not in France, or in French politics, any reason why the Catholic Church should make a pretense of liberality, as she did in the United States at Chicago; for just as an attempt to appear abreast with the age would help her in a country where religionists think, it would injure her prestige and her power with a people who, in matters of religion at least, have had for ages all thought repressed.”
