p. 7 | SECULAR NEWS

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 28, 1876

SECULAR NEWS.

—In Little Rock property has been destroyed by fire to the amount of $350,000.

—Brazil furnishes the United States with thirty-six million pounds of tobacco per annum.

—Paris has devoured during the last half year 700,000 kilogrammes of horseflesh and 48,000 kilogrammes of mule or donkey meat.

—During the last week the police of New York arrested 1,817 persons. For the same period the Bureau of Records of Vital Statistics registered 435 births, 127 marriages and 427 deaths.

—But four buildings now remain in Boston that were standing a hundred years ago. These in the order of their age are Christ Church, the Old South, the old State-house, and the Stone Chapel.

—An ice flood at St. Louis, Dec. 13, destroyed shipping estimated at $200,000. The ice piled in places ten to fifteen feet high. It is said to have been the most disastrous flood of the last ten years.

—A dispatch from New York states that the most terrible outbreak of small-pox ever known in the northern country is raging on the east and west sides of Lake Winnebago. The average of deaths is 180 daily.

—The statue symbolic of Religious Liberty was unveiled on Thanksgiving day at the Centennial grounds. It is the gift of the Israelitish Order of B'nai B'rith in the United States in evidence of the appreciation in which they hold their American privileges.

—The buildings connected with the Centennial exhibition have been sold at auction. The Main Building, which cost $1,600,000, brought only $250,000, and will stand permanently where it is; Agricultural Hall cost $270,000 and sold for $13,100; the art annex cost $110,000 and was knocked down at $3,050—and other buildings in proportion.

—The Shah of Persia is studying the French and English languages, so as to be able to converse without interpreters at the Paris Exhibition in 1878, whether he will travel incognito as “Beglerbeg-i-Iran,” or the Lord of Lords of Persia. He is building a railroad six miles long from his capital, Teheran, to Shah Abdul Azim, a place of pilgrimage.

—Mexico is in trouble as usual. There are now three presidents—or, one and two usurpers. Lerdo, the regularly elected president, was driven from the capital and finally fell into the hands of Díaz who is a chronic usurper. Iglesias also claims to be president. Poor Mexico has had but one competent president during the present generation, and that was Juarez.—Ex.

—The Mexican Revolutionists have captured a Mr. Miller, an American banker at Chihuahua, and demanded $8,000 in gold as a ransom for his release. Colonel Andrews, with a force of infantry, cavalry and artillery, has gone to his rescue. The Revolutionists are reported 400 strong, and have threatened to shoot Miller if they cannot hold him.

—A very foolish competition is that now going on among the arsenals of Europe for the production of the greatest gun. The 100-ton Armstrong has proved itself to be strong enough to smash any ship's armor that can be made to float. That ends the question between armor and guns. But the British navy now wants a 200-ton gun that can sink a vessel at a distance as great as any gun afloat can throw a shell. The plans are for a gun fifty feet long, to throw a missile of 3,500 pounds' weight.—Interior.

—The British Government has formally announced to our own that the position which it had previously taken respecting extradition, that no criminal should be given up except on a pledge that he was not to be tried for any other offense than that for which he was extradited, was “premature,” which is a diplomatic way of saying that it was bad law and is to be abandoned. Accordingly Mr. Brent, the American forger, is to be returned, and Winslow would have been returned with him but that he suspected that his asylum was not perfectly secure and so fled the country.