p. 14 | NEWS AND NOTES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 18, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 24.

NEWS AND NOTES

FOREIGN.

—Famine is said to prevail in Tonquin, owing to prolonged drought and the consequent failure of crops.

—It is announced that the pope has issued an encyclical on the unity of the churches and the supremacy of the see of Rome. Copies are to be sent to all the reigning sovereigns, the object being a union of Christendom with Rome.

—Another rebellion has broken out in Korea, owing to the protracted retreat of the king at the Russian Legation. The insurgents declare his action a disgrace to the country. The revolt is said to embrace already nearly 25,000 men.

—The leaders of the so-called Reform Commission of Johannesburg, convicted of attempting to overthrow the Transvaal Government, and sentenced to death, have been let off with a fine of $125,000 each, or fifteen years' banishment. John Hays Hammond, formerly of California, George Farrar, and J. F. Leonard have paid their fines, but Col. Francis Rhodes, brother of the famous Cecil Rhodes, has chosen the banishment.

—U. S. Consul-General Lee, now in Havana, says: “The war now being waged in Cuba is devastating the island. The destruction of property between the lines of the contending parties is enormous. Bodies of troops from both the Cuban and Spanish armies, and bands of men belonging to neither side, rob and burn between the lines because there is no authority to restrain them. The property of American citizens is suffering greatly, and will continue to suffer until peace comes.”

—Moscow’s great celebration in honor of the czar’s coronation has not passed without at least one frightful calamity, outranking in loss of life the visitation of the death-dealing cyclones of the past few weeks. Preparations had been made on the plain of Khodjinskoje, near Moscow, to banquet 500,000 people at the czar’s expense, and for distributing as many souvenirs. Early on the morning of May 30, about 300,000 people had gathered, and gradually pressed onto the reserved grounds. Just how the rush started is not known, but it is believed the few gendarmes on hand at that hour became alarmed and scattered some of the presents to the crowd in front. The cry spread that the souvenirs were being given, and the immense throng pressed forward to a center, demolishing booths and tables, and trampling to death those who fell, owing to obstructions and uneven ground. When the crush passed, the dead and wounded were removed. An official statement says that 1,336 were killed, and several hundred more wounded. It is believed, however, that many more than this were trampled or crushed to death. Some estimate the loss of life at 3,000. The greater majority of those who perished belonged to the peasantry. A sum of money was ordered by the czar to be given the families or relatives of the dead.

DOMESTIC.

—Santa Barbara, Cal., has been made a sub-port of entry by act of Congress.

—The Pacific Hotel at Oceanside, Cal., was burned on the 13th inst. Loss, $50,000.

—Congress adjourned sine die on the 11th inst. The appropriations for various purposes during the session amounted to $515,759,820.

—The California Winemakers’ Association has let a contract for the erection at Fresno of one of the largest distilleries in the United States.

—Congress has authorized the building of three new battle ships, to cost $3,500,000 each. One of the vessels is to be built on the Pacific Coast.

—John Craig, who murdered his wife and both her parents at Los Angeles, Cal., two years ago, was hanged at the Folsom Penitentiary on the 12th inst.

—A heavy wind and rain storm, accompanied by sharp lightning flashes, damaged the city of Newark, N. J., to the extent of $150,000, on the night of the 9th inst.

—Four hundred stone quarry workmen at Berea, Ohio, struck on the 11th inst. They demand that all non-union men be discharged, and that the union men heretofore discharged be reinstated.

—At the Railroad Building, junction of Market and Montgomery Streets, San Francisco, on the 13th inst., an elevator fell from the fifth floor to the basement, seriously injuring three of the five men riding in it.

—At Merced, Cal., on the night of the 13th inst., the explosion of a coal oil lamp in a dry goods store caused a fire that consumed property of the estimated value of $100,000. The managers of the store had just stopped the use of electric lights and returned to oil lamps as a matter of economy.

—Three of the men who started the “Bear Flag Rebellion” in California in 1846, still survive, and on the 13th inst., the anniversary of the raising of the famous flag at Sonoma; they again hoisted the identical banner.

—A despatch from Canton, Ohio, states that, on the 14th inst., a break in Congress Lake Dam caused the deluging of the towns of Middle Branch and Oval City. Two hundred people are reported to have been drowned.

—Captain Jansen, of the steamer Coos Bay, reports that six very much discouraged people are all now remaining of the colony from Vermont and Massachusetts, comprising several hundred persons, who emigrated eight years ago to Topolobampo, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The six who are left are there because they can not get away. The captain says that the colony site, which was so brilliantly pictured by the boomers, is “one of the most desolate spots on earth.”

—Our ambassadors abroad must be careful about their religious associations. Complaint is made of Ambassador Uhl at Berlin on this account. He is accused of showing a decided partiality to the church in Berlin supported by the English colony rather than that attended by the Americans, and for this it is said the minister of the American church has reported his case to several prominent Episcopal Germans in this country, with the request that the State Department be informed.

—Two little girls, named Hazel and Viola Bickford, aged 4 and 7 years, were burned to death in a barn in Los Angeles, Cal., on the 11th inst. They were playing in the barn, and one of them began lighting matches. One of the matches was dropped, and set fire to the hay, and before the girls could get out, they were caught in the flames. A little brother ran to the house for help, but the mother could not reach the girls, on account of the flames. She could only witness their agony and death.

—A Chronicle report of the Holiness camp-meeting in the suburbs of this city, under date of the 11th inst., says that the minister “worked his hearers into a state of wild excitement last night, and seventeen went into trances. Sixteen were women, and to-day five of them were unable to leave their beds. To-night eight more were overcome. It was a repetition of the scenes of the Woodworth meetings of four years ago, when Errickson predicted the destruction of Oakland and San Francisco, and sent the timid to the hills.”

—There is to be a great sparring contest, or prize-fight, or whatever else it may be called, in San Francisco on the 24th inst. It is to be a “great attraction,” even women are interested. The Civic Federation would like to stop it, but are at a loss in the matter of procedure. The terms are such that it can not be legally stopped until after it has been commenced, and then only if the law is technically violated. So says an attorney of the Federation, who admits that he is rather anxious to see the contest himself. This attorney says he took pleasure in football games when at college, and adds that in football “more men have been killed, more limbs broken, and more serious injuries sustained, than in prize-fights.”