NEWS AND NOTES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 24, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 38.

FOREIGN.

—A Barcelona, Spain, despatch says that 2,500 troops embarked from that port for Cuba on the 18th inst.

—The city council of Amsterdam, Holland, has decided that a third of the members of the school board should be women.

—The Volksraad of the Transvaal (South African Republic) has enacted a new liquor law embodying total prohibition of the sale of liquors to natives.

—A late despatch from Constantinople says that within a few days seven men had been slain while attempting to reach the sultan's apartments with the object of assassinating him.

—It is designed to have a grand celebration of the Band of Hope jubilee and Queen Victoria's sixty years' reign next summer, by a great temperance demonstration at the London Crystal Palace.

—More conflicts are reported to have occurred between Turkish troops and insurgents in Macedonia. News has been received that 100 insurgents have beleaguered the Convent of St. Denis, near Caryea.

—A Russian general inspecting the Turkish forts along the Dardanelles is looked upon as the significant reply of the sultan to England's demand for his abdication, and Russian determination to sustain Turkey.

—It is said that the Roman Catholic Liberals of Canada propose to appeal to the pope against certain statements of their bishops and priests respecting the duty of Catholics to obey political instruction as well as spiritual.

—A band of Bulgarian brigands armed with dynamite bombs, near Seres, in Macedonia, have carried off the brother of the Austrian consul at that place, and also a wealthy Greek landed proprietor. The captives are being held as hostages for ransom.

—The Anglo-Egyptian expedition against the Dervishes has occupied Kerma, and advanced within thirteen miles of Dongola, says the latest news from the trouble on the Upper Nile. A battle was fought on the 19th inst., and the Dervishes were defeated with considerable loss.

—A Rome correspondent says peace has been concluded by Italy with Abyssinia. King Menelik demanded 2,016,000 lire, about $400,000, not as a ransom, but as compensation for the cost of maintaining his prisoners. The restriction of the limits of Erythia was also demanded in exchange for the opening up of commercial relations. Russia supported these conditions.

—A Constantinople despatch says: “The grand vizier, Halif Rifat Pasha, threatens to resign unless the minister of police is dismissed, on account of the recent massacres. The sultan upholds the police minister, and refuses to accept the resignation of the grand vizier.” Another despatch gives emphasis to the fact of the paralysis of trade there, and the jeopardy of £400,000,000 of European capital engaged in enterprises in Turkey.

—Two men named George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen recently crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an eighteen-foot rowboat, making the journey from New York to St. Mary's Gulf in fifty-five days. They encountered three heavy gales, in the last of which the boat was nearly capsized, and most of their provisions were lost. They succeeded in righting the boat, and soon after met a vessel, from which they received a new supply of food.

—From Constantinople to the Aegean Sea is forty-seven miles along the Straits of the Dardanelles. The straits have a general width of three or four miles, and on either side the hills are lined with batteries. At one point the passage is less than a mile. The passage of the straits is forbidden to armed vessels of all nations, without the consent of the sultan. This passage in the hands of any of the greater powers would be deemed impassable by an enemy's fleet.

—Two men, named Kearney and Haines, supposed to be dynamite plotters, have been arrested at Rotterdam, where they were in possession of a supply of explosive materials. An accomplice named Tynan is under arrest at Boulogne, supposed to be implicated in the Phoenix Park murder of Lord Cavendish some years ago. They were all Irishmen, and recently crossed over from America, via England. The British Government has demanded their extradition, as it is supposed they were preparing for mischief in that country.

—The foreign office has given out the following semi-official note: “The outburst of the continental press against Great Britain, which is accused of selfish design in the east, has astonished official circles. Nothing that is being done or contemplated by the government could give the slightest color to such assertions. The government can not hold itself responsible for the natural horror inevitably inspired in the minds of the public by the atrocities at Constantinople. The policy of Great Britain has, however, undergone no change whatever, and the government is acting in complete accord with the other powers, as it has hitherto done. Nevertheless, it is becoming obvious that the public feeling in Great Britain has been so outraged by the shocking events in Constantinople that the government would never be supported in again siding with the Porte. If the powers can not see their way to adopt means to co-operate to end the carnage, the only course open to Great Britain is to stand aside and to hope for a more satisfactory state of affairs.” In addition to this the Times calls attention to the notorious fact that Russia will not tolerate any coercion of Turkey, and appeals to the country to consider well the risks it will run in an agitation for action on the part of England. Despatches from Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg reproduce semi-official articles given out at those capitals, showing that the powers are not disposed to assist in any coercion of Turkey.

DOMESTIC.

—The International Congress of Woman's Rights will assemble next week in Berlin. Six hundred delegates are expected.

—A Little Rock despatch says that a number of wardens of the Arkansas penitentiary have been discharged for cruelty to prisoners.

—The Post-office Department has prohibited the use of the mails to the “bucketshop” operators of Chicago, numbering about fifty firms.

—Carlos Roloff, a major-general in the Cuban insurgent army, has been arrested in New York on a charge of aiding and abetting filibustering expeditions to the island.

—A statement prepared at the mint bureau shows that the silver coinage during the month of August aggregated $2,650,000. This yielded to the government a profit or seigniorage of $822,027.03.

—On the 15th inst., a mob of laborers battled with the police in South Chicago over a driver, whom they threatened to lynch because his runaway horse knocked down several of the crowd.

—A good average of California young men, from a physical standpoint, is shown by recent measurements at the State University. The freshman class of 260 averaged as follows: Height 5 feet 10½ inches; weight, 153.6 pounds, stripped; age, 19 years, 6 months.

—The Secretary of the Navy has authorized contracts for three new cruisers and a number of torpedo boats. One cruiser will be built at Philadelphia, to cost $2,650,000; one at Newport News, Va., to cost $2,595,000; and one at San Francisco, to cost $2,674,950.

—The cruiser Cincinnati left New York on the 17th inst., bound for Mediterranean ports, to relieve the Marblehead, which will return for repairs. The captain said: “Our ship will go up the Bosphorus unless we are stopped by the sultan's forts, and we feel confident they will remain silent.”

—Two brothers, John and Cesar Cummings, are to be hanged in San Quentin, Cal., penitentiary, on the 26th inst., for murder and robbery. The crime was committed for the paltry sum of $300, altho they claim that they did not intend to commit murder. Their victim fought them and was killed.

—Lord Chief Justice Russell, of England, is on a visit to the United States, and on the 18th inst. called at the tomb of Washington, at Mt. Vernon, and planted a memorial tree. He was accompanied by Justice Harlan, of the United States Supreme Court, Secretary of the Interior Francis, and Attorney-General Harmon.

—An attempted raid upon the custom-house at Las Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico, on the 14th inst., resulted in the death of two of the raiders and the fatal wounding of two of the defenders. Others on both sides were slightly wounded. The raiders numbered about fifty, Indians, Mexicans, and white men, supposed to be Americans. The custom-house party numbered about half as many, but they finally succeeded in driving off the bandits, who fled across the line into New Mexico, and took refuge in the mountains.

—A party of scientists are about to start from Perth Amboy, N. J., on a tour of scientific research around the world. It is the design to visit regions concerning which little or nothing is really known. The party is to include A. E. Howlett, a naturalist and geologist; Dr. Theodore Werrill, a physician and botanist; D. W. Smith, a photographer; W. P. Newcomb, who will attend to the business part of the expedition, and H. H. Tabor, of Buffalo. The vessel is to be the schooner-yacht Norna, carrying a crew of sixteen men, a captain, two mates, a chef and assistant, besides a mess cook and two cabin-boys. Two rapid-firing guns and a supply of rifles, revolvers, and other weapons of defense will also be taken along.

—The secretary of the Indiana State Board of Health reports an epidemic of malignant diphtheria in the country adjacent to West Baden and French Lick Springs, in that state. There had been, at the time of the report, seventy cases and twenty deaths. No attempt had been made to quarantine the infected houses, and the attending physicians went from house to house in the neighborhood without changing their clothing.

—Among the queer complications which the Turkish question suggests, is the proposition by the St. James Gazette, London, that a triple alliance be formed by Great Britain, Italy, and the United States. The London Chronicle also favors such a combination. But, if the United States were to take a hand in the manipulation of eastern affairs, what would become of the “Monroe Doctrine”? If we should violate the principle in its application to that end of the line, could we any longer object to European interference in the affairs of the Central and South American nations? However, we are on the eve of a time when many national theories and purposes will be overturned. It would seem that there is about as much call for interference in Cuba, on humanitarian grounds, as in Turkey.

—It seems that followers or sympathizers of the Mexican “healer,” Santa Teresa, are determined to make trouble. A Las Cruces, N. M., despatch of the 17th inst. says that a body of seventy-five well-mounted and armed men with rifles, had just passed Rincon, sixty miles above that place on the Rio Grande, and that the men were riding hard toward El Paso. On the same night the police arrested three Mexicans on the outskirts of El Paso, mounted and heavily armed. Each one of the men carried a picture of Santa Teresa in his pocket, and they also had a copy of El Independiente, containing a severe criticism of President Diaz. Bernal, the attaché of the Mexican International Dam Commission, who was kidnapped and then released by the band that assaulted Palomas, says that the leader of the band was Pompano Ramond Urrea, an uncle of Santa Teresa. Bernal says that all the men carried Santa Teresa's picture, and read a proclamation from her every night.