SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 39.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—Jules Simon is seriously ill.

—It is claimed that the State of Texas has 1,750,000 inhabitants.

—A disease has broken out among the cattle in Solano county.

—The total of the national debt, less cash in the treasury, is $2,051,587,254.

—A colored teachers' association has been formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.

—The Pacific Mail Ship Company has discharged all Chinese employees, except on the Chinese line.

—The business part of Wyoming, Iowa, has recently been destroyed by fire. Loss, $30,000; uninsured.

—Baltimore is constructing a tunnel seven miles long and twelve feet in diameter, in its endeavor to get a supply of pure water.

—A telegram has been received at Madrid from Singapore (South Africa), announcing the defeat of two thousand insurgents by Spanish troops.

—The Pioneer Land and Loan Bank of San Francisco suspended Monday morning, owing depositors $850,000.

—There are seventy-eight children at the Vallejo Orphans' Home now, which is said to be the largest number ever in the institution.

—President Lincoln's monument at Springfield, Illinois, is nearly completed. The groups of statuary are being lifted to their places.

—During the past year the United States sold 105,000,000 yards of cotton goods abroad, ten times more than was exported the year before.

—An attempt is being made to open communication with the interior of Ecuador by way of the River Putumayo, or Ica, leading into the Amazon.

—San Francisco has 42 letter carriers whose delivery of mail matter for the month of July was 319,706 letters, 106,650 local letters and 183,479 newspapers, etc.

—Russia is said to produce annually 1,606,000,000 bushels of wheat, Germany 742,500,000, France 687,500,000, Austria 550,000,000, the United States 1,881,760,925 bushels.

—Gen. Miles and Nez Perce Joseph had a fight on Snake river, September 30. The result was twenty-three soldiers killed and forty-four wounded, and seventeen Indians killed and forty wounded.

—A dispatch has been received from Mr. Stanley, the African explorer, dated Embomma, in Congo, West Coast of Africa, August 10, in which he says that he has completely navigated the Lualaba, and succeeded in proving it to be identical with the Congo.

—There are twenty-seven cases of yellow fever at Port Royal, twenty-one whites and six blacks. The population is ninety-four whites and one hundred and thirty-seven blacks. The Mayor telegraphs, “We are suffering for medicines, nurses, and provisions.”

—October 3, Professor Henry of the Smithsonian Institute received the following cablegram: “A comet was discovered by Temple at Florence Italy, October 2. Right ascension, 23 hours 51 seconds; declination, south 10 degrees and 19 minutes; daily motion, 9 minutes toward the southward. The comet has a small bright tail.”

—It is stated that on September 11th and 12th, very heavy rains occurred at various places throughout Arizona; a heavy thunder storm and cloud-burst took place on the Colorado Desert on the line of the railway near Pilot Knob; four inches of snow fell at Eureka, Nevada; and heavy rains fell in Oregon and other portions of the Pacific coast.

—W. H. Vanderbilt, President of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern railroad, issued a general order to officers and employees, notifying them that an advance of 5 per cent upon the compensation of all the employees of the company affected by the July reduction of 10 per cent, and whose pay amounts to less than $2,000 per annum, will be made on and after November 1.

—October 5, the western abutment to the great iron bridge that spans the Missouri at Atchison, Kansas, caved into the river with a terrible crash, carrying the entire 15-foot wall and about 75 feet of the embankment, and a huge mass of the heavy masonry and thousands of cubic yards of earthwork. The office and bridge approach was hurled into the Missouri river. The bridge men say the damage will be repaired in thirty days.

—The total number of blind persons now living is estimated at over two and a quarter millions. The proportion of blind persons to the entire population of the United States is 1 to 1,900 or 20,041 in a population of 38,115,641. In British North America, 1 to 1,692. In Mexico, 1 to 1,500. In the West Indies, 1 to 616. In Central and South America, 1 to 800. In Australia and Polynesia, 1 to 800. In Europe, 1 to 1,094. In Asia, 1 to 431. In Africa, 1 to 300.

—Two hundred and fifty-eight patients were admitted to the Napa Insane Asylum within the past year, as follows: From San Francisco, 180; Alameda county, 30; Los Angeles, 14; Napa, 16; Sacramento, 8; Colusa, 10. The institution, with its present accommodations, is now full—so, also, is the Stockton Asylum—but extra room can be had, by finishing the upper floor, for some two hundred more patients. The officers of the Napa Asylum suggest the building of almshouses, to accommodate many who are now sent to the insane asylum who really are not fit subjects for that charity.