Canal Improvements and Recent Disasters
New York State has decided to expend $100,000,000 in the work of improving the Erie Canal and other artificial waterways in the State. This move is said to be due to the high price charged by the railroads for the transportation of grain. Casualties.—Since the 13th of October the following notable disasters have occurred: The American whaler, Joseph Manta, was wrecked in the Azores on October 13, and her entire crew of 15 men was lost. The steamer On Hing capsized on the Lai Chow River, in South China, and more than 100 persons were drowned. Fifteen persons were killed and 40 injured in a railway collision on the Pennsylvania Railroad in New Jersey on October 17. About 350 lives were lost and many persons were injured in an earthquake recently at Turshez, Persia. Thirteen villages were destroyed, and 5,000 persons were left homeless. The ship Milton Park is reported lost with her crew of 24 men. The French bark Savoyard was wrecked near Brest, France, on October 27, carrying down 39 persons. Two steamers, a Russian and a Japanese, collided in a fog off the Japanese coast on October 29, and 44 persons are reported lost. Fifteen persons were killed and over fifty injured in a railway collision at Indianapolis, Indiana, on October 31. Twenty-five persons lost their lives in a tenement-house fire in New York on November 1. Eight miners lost their lives in a mine fire at Virginia City, Montana, on November 6. France is viewing with alarm the decrease of 34,000 in the number of recruits for the army for the present year. Therefore an extra parliamentary commission is advocating reforms calculated to lighten the burdens of the parents of large families, such as the improvement of sanitation in order to reduce infant mortality, and the diminishing of the portion of estates left to an only child, together with moral suasion and a propaganda to deter the peasantry from flocking to the cities. France fears that the decrease in the number of recruits for her army will put her at the mercy of Germany. Another brutal college hazing has ended in murder. Two students of the Maryland University were so terribly beaten by the initiators in a college secret society that one has died and the other is, perhaps, fatally injured. The leader of the secret society has been arrested, and a large number of the members of the society are summoned to give testimony. It will doubtless develop that there were no witnesses of the cruel barbarism, no one will be punished, and this uncivilized appendage of modern education will continue its wicked work. A wonderful petrified forest has been discovered in Montana. The curator of the geology department of the National Museum has returned from its inspection. In this forest trees and logs have been changed to opal, making a peculiar and ornamental stone. This is the only known forest of opalized wood in the world. The opal is of a variety of colors. The great oil trust has advanced the price of coal-oil two cents a gallon in less than a month. Statisticians who have been figuring on what this means to the trust state that it gives an annual added increase of $30,000,000 to the income of the trust magnates, and means an additional tax on the people to that amount. The doctrine of Christian Science is said to be making rapid headway in England. Many people throughout the country are said to have embraced the doctrine, and plans are already laid for a magnificent temple in London. Funds are being liberally subscribed for the propagation of the new religion. The largest meteor ever found in the United States, and one of the largest ever found in the world, was recently discovered in the State of Oregon. It is estimated to weigh between ten and twenty tons. Appearances would indicate that it had been buried for centuries in the hill where it was unearthed. It is reported that half of the Georgia negroes who went to the west coast of Africa last January to experiment there with cotton-growing have died, and that the others are now on their way back to this country. They declare that the colonization of American negroes in West Africa is a failure. Macedonian refugees to the number of 60,000 are said to be now suffering for clothing and the necessaries of life along the Bulgarian-Turkish frontier. It is expected that great multitudes of these will perish during the winter unless relief can reach them. Two massacres of German garrisons in Southwest Africa are reported from Cape Town, one a police post at Usibis, and the other a regular garrison at Warmbad. The trouble arose over the natives resisting certain regulations of the German officials. The reform element in New York, tho defeated by the Tammany forces in the recent election, are planning to do everything in their power to frustrate the plans of the Tammany leaders for making New York a “wide-open” town. A destructive fire occurred in the Vatican at Rome on November 1, ruining several of the rooms of that historic building with their contents.