SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 31.

SECULAR.

—The Afghan question is not yet settled.

—The Porte has made contracts with Krupp for $3,500,000 worth of guns.

—Nine presidents and ex-presidents of the United States have died since Lincoln's first election.

—The times are so hard in Japan that the city of Kioto is said to be infested with 30,000 beggars.

—A terrible wind and rain-storm passed over Charleston (A. T.) August 6, damaging mill property to the extent of about $20,000.

—David K. Udall, the leading Mormon bishop of Arizona, was convicted, August 6, of perjury. Perjury and polygamy go well together.

—An agent of the Mormon church proposes to settle 300 fresh European convicts upon land in Delaware and Jackson counties, Ala.

—August 6, Police Judge Rix, of San Francisco, ordered five sloggers to be committed for trial in $1,000 bonds. May the good work go on.

—Storms of great violence swept over the central and northern parts of Spain, August 3, destroying much property and injuring many persons.

—It is said that it will take six months to bring the surplus grain of eastern Oregon and Washington to Portland, at the rate of twelve trains daily.

—The heaviest storm ever known at Nogales, Arizona, occurred August 5. The violent hail and heavy rain filled the streets with running water like a river.

—The British bark Isabel arrived at Port Townsend, Washington Territory, from Yokohama with a cargo of 950 tons of tea, which goes East on the Northern Pacific R. R.

—It now turns out that those parties who won gold medals at the New Orleans Exposition will have to forward eighty dollars each to pay for the medals, or go without them.

—According to the San Francisco Bulletin of August 5, Professor Dennis Buttler, with hands and feet firmly tied, recently swam East River, a distance of a mile, in nineteen minutes.

—A woman who was recently returning to England on a visit, after being out about three days, in consequence of severe seasickness, rushed for the deck and threw herself overboard, and was not seen afterward.

—A plague seems to be prevailing on the Isthmus of Panama. A dispatch to the Chronicle (S. F.) of August 6, says of Colon, a city of about 10,000 inhabitants, "There are sometimes as many as twenty-five deaths a day."

—There seems to be a strong war feeling in Russia; and a Parisian paper states that "an alliance has been concluded between Great Britain and China for mutual action in the event of war between England and Russia."

—Minister Denby was conducted by a police sergeant and a Chronicle reporter through the Chinese quarters in San Francisco. After a visit to the lodging departments, Mr. Denby said, "I never saw such wonderful economy of space."

—The unpleasantness existing between Postmaster-General Vilas and the steamship lines to Australasia may result in much damage to this part of the country on account of the trade in fruit that will be checked should the lines stop running.

—President Cleveland received, August 4, a delegation from the cattle men of Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservations; but refused to modify the order already issued, that all cattle be removed from these reservations within forty days.

—The cyclone on the Atlantic Coast, Monday, August 3, appears to have been one of the most destructive on record. Some six or eight lives were lost, some sixty persons were injured, and $500,000 worth of property was destroyed.

—Cholera has commenced its ravages in Marseilles and other French cities; but it seems to be doing its deadliest work in Spain, where the number of deaths August 3, 1,701; August 4, 1,570; August 5, 1,638; August 6, 910, incomplete; August 7, 1,662.

—Dispatches from Kashden, Asiatic Russia, say that a great earthquake has visited that region. It damaged most of the houses in the town of Bisheerzek, and ruined the cities of Suluk and Belvoosk. Fifty-four persons were killed and sixty-four injured.

—A gang of over eighty negroes have been committing fearful outrages in the vicinity of Huntington, Pa. Two families in the country, one keeping a tavern, and the other a saloon, were robbed and most outrageously tortured, one woman being left naked and nearly dead.