News and Notes

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 26.

FOREIGN.

—Czar Nicholas II. has donated to charities $75,000 as a memorial of his coronation.

—The English ship Scottish Dales lies on a coral reef in the Fiji Islands, a total wreck. The crew landed at Suva, Fiji.

—There is still in existence in Australia the hotel in which the marquis of Salisbury lived while digging gold in Bendigo.

—According to the report of Mgr. Angouard, cannibalism still exists in the region of the Kongo, particularly along the Ubangi River.

—Queen Victoria’s traveling expenses in connection with her trip to Riviera amounted to about $25,000. It is reported that she is much benefited in health and spirits.

—It is believed that Macedonia is contemplating an insurrection against Turkish rule. A committee from that province has decided to make a demand for Macedonian autonomy.

—The American school at Athens, in its preliminary work of excavation upon the site of ancient Corinth, has discovered the theater, which gives a key to the location of other important edifices now slumbering among those historic ruins.

—The widow of Baron Hirsch recently placed in the hands of the director of public assistance in Paris 100,000 francs ($20,000) to be distributed among the poor of that city, in memory of her husband, the great Hebrew philanthropist.

—At the Paris Exposition in 1900 it is proposed to have an exact reproduction of the house in which Napoleon spent his last days. The building will be surrounded by panoramic canvasses representing the natural scenery of his exile home.

—The membership of the English Wesleyan Church seems to be rapidly on the decrease. During the last year they recorded a loss of 2,275. This is attributed to its slavery to routine, its refusal to modify the church system, and its “snub to women as a factor of Methodism.”

—The failing health of Turkey’s ruler has created considerable stir among the nations of Europe. Germany is asking the Porte for immediate and satisfactory action in Crete, while Russia makes demands of a somewhat similar nature in regard to affairs in Macedonia and Bulgaria.

—The czarina of Russia has recently ordered a typewriter with gold type-bars, and frame inlaid with pearls. It is safe to predict that this royal typist will make no wax stencils on this machine, nor do much heavy manifolding. Gold type-bars would not even be a luxury in work of this nature.

—The latest reports from Yokohama state that 27,000 persons were drowned and 8,000 injured in the recent tidal wave and earthquake in the northern provinces of Japan. It is claimed that along the Pacific Coast a slight tidal wave occurred as a probable result of the great disturbance in Japanese waters.

—A tidal wave struck the Hawaiian Island on June 5, and did considerable damage to property, but no lives were sacrificed. The disturbance in Honolulu was not very marked, but in the islands of Kauai and Hawaii the waves were from fifteen to forty feet in height. Vessels were swept shoreward and left on the beach, and fish were found far inland.

—There is considerable talk of a closer union between Spain, France, and Russia, in view of Spain’s trouble in the island of Cuba; and the Spanish Liberalists are loud in their accusations against the course which Spain has taken in making “humiliating concessions” to the American Government. The press is applauding the orators and claiming that the treaties of 1795 and 1877 between America and Spain should be repudiated as serious obstacles to the pacification of Cuba. Arrangements are now being made by Spain for the transportation of re-enforcements and munitions of war from the mother country to the seat of operations in Cuba. In the meantime the weary war drags on.

—Mr. Gladstone’s letter to the pope, through Bishop Rampola, may not be a plea for the union of the Roman and Protestant churches as such, but it is certainly a straw which shows the religious drift. The inquiry which the pope will make through his learned tribunal in regard to the validity of ordinations in the Church of England is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as a progressive move toward the fusion of dissenting religious bodies, and Leo XIII. is highly praised for his courageous action, in view of existing prejudices. But Rome can be courageous where nothing is to be lost and a possibility exists of something being gained. The work of spanning the no longer impassable gulf goes on.

DOMESTIC.

—A monument of Gen. U. S. Grant is soon to be unveiled in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

—Elmwood, the historic home of James Russell Lowell, is to be sold to the city of Cambridge for a public park.

—The explosion of a kerosene lamp caused a $60,000 blaze in the city of Merced, California, on the night of June 14. No lives were lost.

—During the last nine months California has produced 4,233,116 gallons of wine, in the manufacture of which there were used 1,027,909 gallons of brandy.

—When Postmaster General Wilson leaves the presidential cabinet, it is expected that he will accept the position of president in one of our western colleges.

—Lyman Trumbull, lawyer, judge, and ex-senator, died on June 25 at his home in Chicago, having spent more than sixty years of his life in active public service.

—A disastrous cloudburst occurred at Marietta, Ohio, on the night of June 24, which swept away houses, drowned stock, and destroyed thousands of dollars’ worth of property.

—The Southern Baptists in recent convention at Chattanooga, Tennessee, adopted resolutions showing their unwavering opposition to the liquor traffic in any and all of its forms.

—The American Temperance University, at Harriman, Tennessee, has just closed its third and most successful year. It has an enrollment of 355 and a graduating class of 17 members.

—The Christian Endeavorers of Mt. Vernon, Vermont, have been petitioning the Postmaster General to close the post-office at that place on Sunday. Like the importunate widow, they have had their petition granted, and it may be for the same reason.

—Since last December no rain has fallen in the vicinity of Albuquerque, N. M., but on June 25 occurred the heaviest rain which has ever been known in that section. The arroyos are running bank full, and grave fears are entertained that much loss of property may result.

—The United States Government some time ago instituted criminal proceedings against James Addison Peralta Reavis, charging him with intent to defraud the government out of 12,000,000 acres of land in eastern Arizona, and now has many witnesses ready, it is said, to prove the fraud.

—The new battle ship Oregon is now the property of the United States, the last installment having been paid by the government to the builders on June 25. She was built in the yards of the Union Iron Works, of San Francisco, and the officials of the government have expressed their entire satisfaction with the completed vessel.

—At the last commencement exercises of Harvard University the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon John Muir, of California. Mr. Muir is a naturalist, a philosopher, and a distinguished writer upon subjects of natural history. It is this that has won for him the unasked honor bestowed by one of the highest educational institutions in the land.

—The University of Pennsylvania sought to teach a lesson to some of her athletic students by ruling them out of the rowing match with Harvard and Columbia Colleges because they had failed in their examinations; but personal influence came between, the lesson was lost, and the educational failures were given a chance to win collegiate honors in the realm of sport.

—Governor Morton, of New York, has appointed a committee of fifteen to draw up a charter for the Greater New York. Among the members of this committee are President Low, of Columbia College, formerly mayor of Brooklyn, the present mayors of the three cities which are to be incorporated into one, and a number of others who have achieved prominence in the administration of public affairs.

—A bold plan to wreck and rob the First National Bank of Los Angeles came to light on the morning of June 25. To reach the steel vault of the bank a tunnel 102 feet long was dug by the robbers. They had proceeded with their excavations far enough to be directly under the vault, and had removed a part of the brick work beneath it, when they were frightened away by the discovery of their operations. One of the suspected robbers is in custody and the rest are at large.

—Another disgraceful bout has taken place in San Francisco. The participants wore gloves—some of the spectators wore veils—and it took three pages of the newspapers to tell the people about it. Participants in encounters of this kind are standing demonstrations of human retrogression toward the lower order. Those who found satisfaction in beholding the degrading spectacle thereby placed a premium upon the aping of the brute creation in one of its most repulsive characteristics; and the newspapers, which mirrored the whole thing, that all might see it, bear an unintended but no less true and sad testimony to the fearful degeneracy of the times.