p. 14 | NEWS AND NOTES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 9, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 27.

NEWS AND NOTES

FOREIGN.

—Egypt prohibits the cultivation of tobacco, and yet that country exports about 150,000,000 cigarettes annually.

—The massacre of whites in Matabeleland still continues, and a powerful attack on Buluwayo is expected on July 10.

—Emile Arton, one of the Panama Canal conspirators, has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment at hard labor.

—Parisian officials have recently made the startling announcement that fully one hundred lepers are at large among the poor of that city.

—Smallpox and yellow fever are running amuck in the island of Cuba, and fears of their ravages are causing many of the Spanish families to leave the country.

—Advices from Lima, Peru, dated July 2, state that severe earthquakes are occurring daily in the vicinity of Arequipa, and much damage has been done to buildings.

—As a result of the seismic and tidal disturbance in Japan, many of the sites of former villages are entirely submerged, the waters of ocean covering them to a great depth.

—By a simple flaw in the will of Baron de Hirsch, the fortune of his adopted daughter, Lucienne, who is now fifteen years of age, will probably be changed from $1,000,000 to $75,000,000.

—The Egyptian Government packet from Suakim to Suez, in consequence of a broken shaft, was wrecked on a reef on July 1, and it is feared that her sixty passengers are drowned.

—A member of the Babe Mohammedan Secret Society made an unsuccessful attempt, on June 27, to take the life of the Persian shah at Teheran. The would-be assassin was arrested.

—In Canton will be published this year a Chinese Christian newspaper, bearing the name of Light. Its editorial force will consist of two Christian preachers, Wong Yuk Cho and Au Fung Chi.

—London has at last opened her museums on Sunday for the benefit of her working people. On the first Sunday of the opening 10,650 persons visited these places of educational recreation.

—A party of English surveyors has been arrested by the officials of Venezuela, for alleged trespassing on Venezuelan territory, but through the friendly offices of the United States the party was released.

—A private belonging to a regiment of Highlanders, lately rode through the streets of Glasgow on a donkey, and was fined over $15, or one month’s imprisonment, for attaching ridicule to the queen’s uniform.

—An insurrection to overthrow a provisional government is what the republic of Ecuador now has on her hands. The revolt is headed by one Vega, of unknown fame, and report of a decisive battle is momentarily expected.

—Advices from Cuba state that the revolutionists have served formal notice on the inhabitants of Havana that they will destroy every vestige of the city by means of dynamite, and that plans agreed upon for the explosion have already begun to materialize.

—The starving Cretans, victims of Turkish atrocities, have appealed to the United States to send a war ship to their relief. Hunger and exposure have so weakened the women that they can no longer suckle their children, who are dying off by the hundreds.

—Queen Victoria has at last begun to tolerate the telephone in her mansions, and it is expected that an electrophone will soon be placed in her residence, so that she may listen to the music of the concert-hall singers without the necessity of attending the performance.

—Christian Almer, aged 74, and his wife, aged 75, celebrated their golden wedding on June 29 in a very singular way. Christian is a veteran Alpine guide and mountain climber, and the sturdy couple on that day made the ascent of the far-famed Matterhorn, 12,150 feet high.

—The inhabitants of British Columbia are petitioning the Federal Government for a tax of $500 on all Chinese who come to that country. The Mongolians of that section have been interfering so seriously with white labor that the patience of the working classes is exhausted.

—Near Luga, Russia, the police discovered that a sect holding its meetings there had for some time past been sacrificing children. The bodies of many children, apparently two to four years old, were found in a vault under the church. Forty-five persons of both sexes are now in prison accused of murdering these innocents.

—In the Jewish cemetery of Slootzk, in the province of Minsk, an old woman was recently seen weeping over one of the graves. It seems that her son, over whom she was lamenting, had died years ago, but as she could produce no certificate of his death, she had been fined 300 rubles in consequence of his nonappearance at last year’s recruiting.

—Vessels plying between Foochow and the island of Formosa are said to be the constant prey of pirates, who not only seize everything of value, but carry off the women and put the crew and male passengers to death by the most terrible torture. The Chinese Government has promised to act immediately, and it is expected that the pirates will be run down.

—The Peruvian Revolutionists have declared a free republic in the province of Loretto, and are making preparations on an extensive scale to resist all attempts of the government toward their suppression. While this republic has not been recognized by the Brazilian states, it is known that Brazilian sympathy is largely on the side of the revolutionists.

—A process has been patented in Germany for making a substitute for the natural skin for use in the healing of wounds. This tissue is made from the muscular coating of the intestines of animals, which has been divested of mucous membrane and treated to a pepsin solution, followed by a solution of tannin and gallic acid. When placed upon a wound, this artificial skin is wholly absorbed in the healing process.

—It is believed, in diplomatic circles, that as a result of Li Hung Chang’s visit to Moscow, arrangements have been made for a close military alliance between Russia and China, including the construction of a railway to connect the existing Russian-Siberian railway with Port Arthur. Li Hung Chang will visit the United States on his way back to China, and will make a personal inspection of railway service on the lines over which he will ride from New York to San Francisco.

—A new law promulgated in France is officially described as being for the purpose of making marriage easier, by simplifying the proof of parental consent. Heretofore a man under 30 years or a woman under 25 had to give three successive monthly notifications to unwilling parents before their consent could be dispensed with. A single notification by a man over 25 or a woman over 21 will now suffice. One month after such act of respect the marriage may be celebrated.

—The French in their scheme for furnishing funds for the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, have taken time by the forelock in an ingenious manner. The plan is to issue bonds for 65,000,000 francs, each bond of 20 francs value. These bonds do not mature or bear interest. They are simply so many tickets of admission to the fair, each bond representing twenty admissions. But the special feature which attracts the people is that each bond has a chance for a prize in a big lottery, which will be a feature of the exhibition.

—France is now excited over a new prophet, one Pauline Delpont, a lad of nine years. The child is described as very illiterate, speaking only the local dialect, but when inspired, speaks perfect and elegant French, as well as several foreign tongues including Latin. Like all modern prophets, his powers are tested in the guessing of secrets, and throngs are daily visiting the humble home of this child wonder. Tradition had it that the silent tower of the old church of St. Amans was once provided with bells. Young Delpont prophesied that these bells would be found by digging in a certain locality, and that two skeletons would be unearthed before the bells were reached. Excavations in the spot designated proved the prophecy to be correct, and the effect on the superstitious throng can, perhaps, be imagined.

DOMESTIC.

—The mineral product of the United States during the last year was valued at $611,795,290.

—Three bank robbers fully armed and equipped for their wicked work, were captured at Vancouver on June 28.

—An Indian wife’s unfaithfulness resulted in one suicide and a double murder recently near Helena, Montana.

—Five members of the Episcopal Church choir of Charleston, Mass., were drowned while boating on Lake Massapog on June 29.

—Last year there were manufactured in the United States 4,181,000,000 cigarettes, being an increase of 436,000,000 over the year 1894.

—At Fort Smith, Arkansas, on July 1, five members of the “Buck gang” paid with their lives the penalty for murder and criminal assault.

—Five Japanese girls who had been brought to Tacoma for alleged immoral purposes are on their way to San Francisco for deportation to the Mikado’s realm.

—The property of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Talmage’s former church, on Clinton Avenue, was sold, under foreclosure proceedings, for $73,000, or $17,000 less than it cost.

—A sudden squall on Lake Shawano, Wisconsin, on June 28, capsized a small yacht containing a party of nine, six of whom were drowned before assistance could reach them.

—The Mexican minister at Washington has tendered the resignation of his office on account of a report published in an official journal during the recent trouble over the Guatemala difficulty.

—A negro prisoner, accused of the attempted murder of the family of a Mr. Buxton, was taken by a mob from the jail at Rockville, Md., July 4, and hanged. To the last he protested his innocence.

—Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and benefactress in general of the colored race, passed quietly from this life on July 1, at her home in Hartford, Connecticut, at the age of eighty-four years.

—There are said to be over 3,500 miners now at Cook’s Inlet, Alaska, who are stranded and unable to secure employment. Supplies are going fast, and it is feared the men will resort to harsh measures to obtain food if something does not develop soon to furnish relief.

—The total length of telegraph lines in the world at the present time is estimated to be 904,701 miles, while the entire amount of wire used in the construction of the same is 2,682,583 miles, or enough to encircle the globe at the equator something more than 107 times.

—The latest reform crusade is that which is aimed at the use of the bicycle by women. The reformers claim that the bicycle is the devil’s advance agent, morally and physically, and that seventy-five percent of the female cyclists will be invalids within the next ten years.

—As a result of the cave-in at the Wilkesbarre coal mines, on June 28, seventy miners are entombed. The work of rescuing the imprisoned men has been greatly hindered by a number of other cave-ins, and little hope is entertained that any of the unfortunate miners will be alive when reached by the rescuers.

—A body of religious enthusiasts, of Montreal, have adopted the queer practice of sleeping not in beds or on pallets of straw, but in coffins, “narrow, grim, and black.” They subsist upon bread and water, and spend hours of each day bent in prayer about an altar in a darkened chapel, their necks laden with heavy chains.

—A plot to poison the family of John Heilman, Damascus, Oregon, has just come to light through the partial success of the cowardly crime. The agent used was strychnine, which was placed in a barrel of drinking water. One of the members of the family, a child two years old, died from the effects of the poison, and others are in a critical position.

—The Paris award on matters pertaining to seal fishing in Bering Sea is to be considered and upheld as the supreme law of the land. This award restricts the jurisdiction of the United States on the sealing grounds to the territory within the three-mile limit. This makes seal-fishing at all times legal in the open sea, and numbers the days of the Alaskan fur-seal.

—It is stated that at the death of George Washington in 1799 it was found that he had left $20,000 for the establishment of a national university in Washington. This amount at compound interest for nearly one hundred years has now increased to about $5,000,000. It is believed the university will be established in the year 1899, one century from the date on which the bequest was made.

—A San Franciscan has recently patented an invention which is destined to supersede the shuttle-and-bobbin method of weaving. By this device the loom is supplied with a continuous thread, and will run from morning till night without having to be replenished. It is claimed that this invention will make a reduction of one-half in the cost of all productions of the loom.

—Considerable interest is manifest in the astronomical world at the present time over the reappearance of Brook’s comet. It is only visible now by aid of the strongest instruments, as it is very far away. According to calculations this comet is not due until October of the present year, but for some reason it has broken away from its itinerary and comes into observation five months ahead of schedule. Nor is this all. It is bringing three others with it, and presents a spectacle similar to Biela’s comet as seen in 1846.

—Under the auspices of the Red Cross society, a hospital has been established in New York in which no alcoholic medicines are to be used. It is the belief of the founders that alcohol is not only unnecessary in the treatment of disease, but that it is a positive injury to the patient. While acting as a stimulant in a case where a stimulant is necessary, alcohol tears down the cellular tissues of the body, so that a relapse is certain to follow the application. To attain the object for which alcohol has been administered, such drugs as caffeine and nitroglycerine are used, and the founders of this temperance hospital claim that their use is attended with better results than was the use of the alcoholic stimulant.