SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · May 7, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 18.

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SECULAR.

—The estimated deficit in the British budget for 1885-86 is £14,923,000.

—The pay of sailors in the Russian navy has been raised to war rates.

—Fierce forest fires have been raging in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania.

—Twenty-four persons were recently killed by an avalanche at Seydisford, Iceland.

—It is estimated that 350,000,000 bricks will be used in Chicago the present year.

—Seventy riotous strikers were captured by the militia near Joliet, Ill., on the 2d.

—Five steamers have been purchased in America for cruisers in the Russian service.

—Eleven miners were buried alive by a snow-slide near Tennessee Pass, Col., a few days ago.

—The sanitary inspectors say that the disease which has been raging in Spain is not Asiatic cholera.

—The public debt statement shows the reduction of the debt during the month of April to be $5,465,000.

—The N. Y. Mail and Express says that the best asparagus in market comes all the way from California.

—The Journal of Commerce says that there is the poorest prospect for winter wheat the country ever saw.

—A harpoon of the pattern of forty years ago was taken from a whale, recently captured near Coos Bay, Oregon.

—The immigration into Oregon and Washington Territory, averaged about 170 a day, for the month of April.

—Passengers on the Bermuda steamers report that the British are putting Bermuda in a complete state of defense.

—A fire in a tenement house in New York, May 2, resulted in the death of seven persons, and the injury of fourteen others.

—By order of the Government, the English troops are evacuating the Soudan. Hostile Arabs are again becoming troublesome to the British.

—Much damage has been done to crops and stock, especially in the vicinity of Felton, Ark., by the great overflow of the Arkansas River.

—The cyclone season has begun. Sterling, Kansas, was struck by one, April 21, wrecking several houses and barns, but fortunately killing nobody.

—The low lands near Medicine Lodge, Kansas, were deluged on the 21st ult., by a cloud-burst. Many families are known to have perished.

—Farmers in San Joaquin, Amador, Merced, and Stanislaus Counties (Cal.), are troubled over the appearance of immense swarms of grasshoppers.

—General Grant still continues to improve in health, and has resumed work on his book. One day last week he dictated to a stenographer for nearly an hour.

—Grundy, the county seat of Buchanan County, Va., was almost entirely destroyed by fire the morning of the 25th ult. The Court House and the county records were burned.

—Angus M. Cannon, "President of the Salt Lake Stake of Zion," and father of Geo. Q. Cannon, the Mormon apostle, has been found guilty of polygamy, under the Edmunds law.

—The Russian Government has ordered the South-western Railroad Company to have several hundred railway carriages ready as soon as possible, for the transportation of troops.

—A fire in Vicksburg, Miss., on the 22d ult., destroyed property to the amount of $250,000. It is thought that more than twenty lives were lost. Six bodies have been recovered.

—The Rio Grande rose twelve feet in a few hours, on the 19th ult., and then as rapidly subsided. The cause of the rise was a water-spout a few miles above Laredo, Texas. There was much damage to property.

—Panama dispatches of the 30th ult., state that the rebels are completely subdued, and that Azipurin has given up his arms. Business is everywhere resumed, and the difficulties are believed to be at an end.

—It is reported that Reil is attempting to influence the Indians of the northwest territory in his favor, by representing himself as a prophet. He says that his mission is similar to that of El Mahdi in the Soudan.

—Dispatches received in London on the 22d ult. report a terrible volcanic eruption at Passowoc, a province in the eastern part of the island of Java. A number of plantations have been devastated, and many people were killed.

—There was a cyclone at Prairie Grove, near Mexia, Texas, last week, which did much damage. A two-story school-house, in which there were many children, was torn to pieces. One child was killed and many severely injured.

—Twenty inches of snow fell at Denver, Col., on the 23d ult. At the same time, rain fell in south-eastern Kansas to a depth of over twelve inches. All the level country was submerged, fields were devastated, and very many cattle were drowned.

—The English Government has ordered the immediate construction of forty gunboats. These gunboats are to be, according to Admiralty specifications, of new type of naval architecture. They will carry light shell-guns for the purpose of destroying torpedo-boats.

—An express train on the Louisville, Nashville, and Chicago Railroad was stopped by masked men, near Harrodsburg, Ind., on the morning of the 30th ult. The engineer and fireman were compelled to leave their engines; the express messenger, who refused to unlock the safe, was shot dead; and the safe was broken open by the robbers. Only $4 was secured.

—It is said that peanut flour is becoming an important product of the South.

—The English and German Governments have recently been informed by their agents in the South Pacific Islands that the slave trade, with all its horrors, has been revived.