p. 142 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 28, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 9.

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SECULAR.

—The Iowa Senate has passed the prohibition bill.

—Eight men at Baker City, Oregon, have been indicted for stealing cattle.

—Damaging storms are reported throughout the Island of Great Britain last week.

—Nineteen coal-miners lost their lives by an explosion near Uniontown, Pa., on the 20th inst.

—The English House of Commons has sustained the Egyptian policy of the Government by a vote of 311 to 265.

—A Chicago company, with $1,000,000 capital, has been formed to mine the gravel beds of Stanislaus River, in this State.

—Two wood-choppers were caught by an avalanche on Slide Mountain, Nevada, last week, and buried beneath seventy feet of snow.

—Severe wind-storms prevailed along the Ohio Valley on the 19th and 20th insts., greatly damaging buildings already unsettled by the flood.

—The storm last week was disastrous to the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, on the Ogden Division. The road was practically stopped for a week.

—The post-office and custom house, and other property, in Charlottetown, Prince Edwards Island, valued at $250,000, were burned on the 20th inst.

—A recent revolt of native employes of a Dutch factory at Molucca, Spice Island, resulted in a fight of several hours, in which forty natives were killed.

—Reports from Dodge City, Kan., say that losses on the great cattle ranges in that region, by recent storms, amount to about ten per cent. of the whole.

—Last week all the roads in Southern Minnesota and Dakota were reported blockaded with snow, with much suffering on the part of stage-drivers and passengers.

—The remains of DeLong and other victims of the Jeannette polar expedition arrived at New York City on the 22d inst., and were received with much enthusiasm.

—The British Government has presented the Arctic exploring steamer Alert to the United States, and it will accompany the Greely relief expedition as a supply ship.

—The train of the king of Italy was fired at by four men on the 18th inst. A carbineer returned fire, wounding one of the assailants. No other damage reported.

—A mass of ice near the Caspian Sea, upon which some fifty fishermen were at work the other day, was carried out to sea, and all the fishermen are believed to have been drowned.

—A snow-slide occurred at Park City, Utah, on the 18th inst., demolishing several residences. One woman and three children were killed, and another woman fatally injured.

—The people of Manitoba are loud in expressions of wrongs at the hands of the Dominion Government, and are even talking of secession from the Canadian Confederation.

—Nearly all the factories and coal mines at Pittsburg, Pa., stopped by the recent flood, have resumed operations. Also the glass factories, after a close of seven months on account of a strike.

—The rain and melting snow caused two caves in San Fernando Tunnel, on the Southern Pacific Railroad, Feb. 19; also great damage in Soledad Pass, requiring much labor to make repairs.

—Heith, the sixth of the Bisbee, A. T., murderers, who had a separate trial and was sentenced to imprisonment for life, was hanged by a mob on the 21st inst.—twenty-four hours after sentence.

—In Avondale, Ohio, last week, a house containing three colored people was burned, but the inmates were missing. A few days afterward the bodies were found in the Ohio Medical College.

—Mrs. Larson, of Muskegon, Mich., has been convicted of poisoning an old man named John Guild. He had deeded property to her on conditions of being furnished a home during his lifetime. Her husband is charged with being accessory to the deed.

—A Paris dispatch says that many Christians have been massacred in Anam since the first of January. The Anamite Minister of War is implicated. The Chinese Viceroy, prior to the capture of Sontay, ordered the Black Flags to murder every Christian in the city.

—On Persian authority it is stated that Russia intends leading the warlike tribes of Central Asia into India as soon as England gets into difficulty elsewhere. It is on the strength of this promise that Russian influence in that direction is so rapidly spreading.

—Ten thousand pounds is the daily consumption of tobacco in a Government cigar factory in Spain. Five thousand women and girls work in the factory, and receive fifty cents for a day's work, from eight o'clock in the morning until seven, eight, or nine in the evening.

—Los Angeles, Cal. has had a disastrous flood. Bridges and about seventy houses are reported to have been swept away, with heavy losses in the immediate neighborhood. One man was drowned, and at Santa Monica two men were supposed to have been carried out to sea.

—A dispatch of the 20th reports three feet of water running in the streets of San Bernadino. On the California Southern Railroad, twenty-five miles of track was washed away, besides several bridges. The town of Fall Brook was entirely swept off, and some of the inhabitants missing.

—One hundred pounds of dynamite exploded recently, seven miles from Omaha, Neb. It is said "great gaps were made in the earth, and buildings in the neighborhood badly damaged. Only one person was killed, and he was blown to atoms. The shock was distinctly felt in Omaha."

—A very heavy snow-fall is reported in the mountains of Southern Colorado. At Silverton it is said to be six feet on the level, and in some canyons fifty to sixty feet on the main wagon roads. It is thought the blockade will not be broken before April, and supplies are short of many necessary articles.

—Congressman Willis is urging a bill for Government aid to education. He presents figures showing that the combined votes of illiterate citizens would hold a balance of power in fourteen Northern and all the Southern States. There are in thirty-eight States, 1,871,217 illiterate voters, of whom only one in five can write his name.

—The investigation of election riots in Virginia and Mississippi, by Congressional Committees, is progressing—the former at Washington and the latter at New Orleans. It is being developed that a fearful state of affairs existed in both localities complained of—whichever party may have been at fault—a perfect travesty on the idea of a free ballot.

—The Mexican Central Railroad is reported as progressing rapidly, and the managers are confident that it will be completed by March 15, provided the steel and ties can be procured fast enough. The city of Mexico will then be connected with all parts of the United States by rail. The distance from Kansas City is 2,389 miles, and from El Paso, Texas, 1,215 miles.

—At Tamarack Station, on the C. P. Railroad, near the summit of the Sierra Nevada, a misplaced carload of laborers attached to a freight train struck the snow-shed, about sixty feet of which immediately fell. The shed was under a weight of fifteen feet of snow and buried the car. Two men were killed, and others severely injured. The accident occurred through carelessness of a switchman.

—A most destructive cyclone occurred on the 20th inst., affecting North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. It seems to have divided into branches and run in every direction. The destruction of houses, forests, stock, and even of human life was beyond all precedent in the storm line in this country. The last report says that 5,000 houses had been destroyed and 400 lives lost. The sky at midnight was of a glaring red hue.

—Matters in the Soudan are complicated. Tokar has surrendered, and the event occurring just on the eve of ample relief gives the appearance of a preference on the part of the garrison and people for El Mahdi rather than Christian England. Gen. Gordon's proclamation, which agrees not to interfere with the slave-trade creates much excitement in some quarters; but his peculiar mission—that of pacification, and being in a measure alone—renders it probable that he is not absolutely master of the situation, and did the best he could under existing circumstances.

—VIENNA, February 13.—An American Spiritualist named Bastian gave a seance at the Imperial Palace yesterday, at the invitation of the Crown Prince Rudolph and Archduke John. Bastian summoned the spirits from a room adjoining the exhibition hall, whereupon a tall figure in mourning appeared before the panic-stricken spectators. Suddenly the Crown Prince pulled a secret spring, closing the door to the adjoining room, when the spirit, who was Bastian himself, made frantic but vain efforts to escape, amid the laughter of the assembly. Baron Hellenburg, the head spiritualist of Austria, was present, and he apologizes to the effect that "Bastian, although formerly endowed with true spiritualistic power, has lately lost it, and has made up the deficiency by a resort to tricks." He should have made that statement before.