News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 4, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 37.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

The Postmaster-General is urging the establishment of a postal telegraph system.

France and China are yet unable to agree on terms regarding the occupation of Tonquin.

Fires on the mountains in the vicinity of Los Angeles have done great damage to bee ranches.

S. S. Montague, chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad, died suddenly near Shasta on Sept. 24.

The superintendent of the work on the Panama Ship Canal indicates that it will be completed in 1888.

Forty-eight of the fifty-two counties of Georgia have been carried by the advoctaes of local prohibition.

Governor Butler of Massachusetts has been re-nominated by both the Democratic and Greenback Conventions.

A negro woman was hanged on Sept. 24, at Richmond, Va., for complicity in the murder of her husband.

The proposed commercial treaty between the United States and Mexico is creating considerable jealousy in England, both in business and Government circles.

Near San Buenaventura, on the 24th ult., Peter Kohar shot his wife, though not fatally, and then killed himself. He was a native of Alsace, aged 45 years.

A young lawyer in Brooklyn, N. Y., died recently of nicotine poison from cigarette-smoking and tobacco-chewing. He had been addicted to the habit only nine months.

Senator Sharon, one of the principal mine owners in Nevada, gives the opinion that the silver mines of that State are about exhausted, especially the great Comstock Lode.

The widow of the late Dr. Glenn has offered her house for the use of the new cooking school to be established in this city by Miss Juliet Corson of New York.

A terrible hurricane is reported in the vicinity of the Bahama Islands last week, resulting in great damage to shipping and, so far as heard from, the loss of fifty-three lives.

General Sherman will turn over the command of the army to General Sheridan November 1, although his actual retirement from active service will not take effect until February.

There is newspaper complaint that at least two of the United States Supreme Court Judges are figuring for the Presidency, and making rulings and decisions with an eye to influence.

Last week a hail-storm swept over the Ohio Valley, from Carrollton to the vicinity of Lawrenceburg, covering the ground with hail to a depth of from two to four inches, and ruining all standing crops.

At Los Angeles, early in the morning of Sept. 25, a Southern Pacific railroad fireman named H. C. Amadon, was waylaid and killed while going from his train to his home. The murderer is as yet unknown.

A young Irishman named Feeney, supposed to be insane, fired two shots at Mr. Hoare, British Vice-Consul at New York, on the 25th ult. No damage was done. Feeney was arrested, and has been sent to an insane asylum.

The Dominion Government has disallowed the bill passed by the local Legislature of British Columbia permitting United States capitalists to construct a railroad through that province to connect the Canada Pacific with lines in this republic.

Great damage was done during the early part of last week, by fire raging in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Immense destruction of timber, fences, and pastures was the result, and only by the desperate efforts of organized parties was much other property saved.

On the 12th ult., a dreadful explosion took place in the rocket factory of the Woolwich (England) arsenal. Fortunately only two lives were lost, but a great amount of property was destroyed in the vicinity. Some projectiles were hurled a distance of five miles.

The Alta says: "So long as millions of dollars are annually sent out of the country in payment for Mediterranean raisins, figs, prunes, nuts, oranges, lemons, and olives, the fruit-growers in California can feel free from anxiety lest they overdo the business in those lines."

Last week, near this city, E. Moon struck Henry Fink and injured him so that he died a few days afterward. Fink had bought some wood from a man who owed Moon one dollar, and refused to satisfy the latter's demand for payment of the other man's debt; hence the assault.

Another explosion of the California Powder Company's works at Pinole Station, took place Sept. 29. The entire works and buildings were destroyed. The foreman of laborers was killed, and another white man seriously injured. Of forty-two Chinese laborers, only two were found alive after the explosion.

Justice Field, of the U. S. Supreme Court, has affirmed the decision of Judge Sawyer, that a Chinaman who is a native of the English colony of Hongkong is not, under the treaty, entitled to enter the United States any more than a native of the Chinese Empire. This just reverses a late Boston decision.

A young lady named Ada Atkinson, aged 15, whose family resides near Oxford, Indiana, was left alone at the residence one day last week. When her sister returned towards evening, Ada was found in the room dead, her throat cut, and her body covered with knife gashes. There was at last reports no clue to the murderer.

There is lively times in the vicinity of Tucson, A. T. A sheriff's posse of twenty-five men surrounded four "cowboys" and succeeded in killing one of them. Two escaped unhurt; the fourth was wounded, but made his way to the hills and could not be found. Another dispatch says fears are entertained for the safety of two officers who went in search of stage robbers.

About $50,000 worth of fashionable dress goods was seized by the New York Custom House officers last week, that had been smuggled by four lady passengers from Europe. The officers affirm that dressmakers from the large cities have been systematically defrauding the revenue for some time, and a special effort is now on foot to break up the business of smuggling in this line.

The regular equinoctial storm, which is every year a terror to navigators on the great lakes, was unusually severe this year. On the night of the 24th ult., the wind attained a velocity of fifty-five miles an hour at Buffalo. Several vessels were wrecked, and much property adjacent to the lake shore was destroyed. Also, on Lake Ontario the gale was fearful. Three vessels were driven ashore, one of them was foundered and all hands (seven persons) lost.

In North San Juan a Chinese father is carrying on the process of cramping his little daughter's feet, to make them conform to his notion of aristocracy, and complaint has been made to the District Attorney, who will speedily ascertain if there be any law in this country to try to prevent such cruelty. Speaking of the case, the Alta pertinently remarks: "According to the doctrines of the development philosophers, the feet of Chinese women, having been cramped out of shape for several hundred generations, ought to be naturally small and need no artificial treatment. Why is it not so? Here is a nut for evolutionists-'Christian' or otherwise-to crack at their leisure."

A drowned man named F. Wilkinson, picked up on the San Joaquin River; two men killed and several wounded by a boiler explosion at Albany, N. Y.; four men and a large number of cattle killed by a railroad collision near Shakopee, Minn.; two U. S. Marshals killed while attempting to arrest whisky peddlers in the Indian Territory; three negroes hanged at Chatham, Va., and one at Savannah, Georgia, for murder; a duel near Lancaster, Va., and probable death of one of the combatants; a negro woman burned alive in her son's house at Bloomington, Indiana; an attempted murder and suicide at New Orleans; the death of two Portuguese at Yreka, caused by the caving of a ditch; the suicide of Daniel Lewis at Linden, San Joaquin County; the shooting of a litigant by his opponent, in the Superior Court at Downieville; the finding of three men in a fishing dory off the New Brunswick coast, who had been out six days without food, and one of whom was sucking his own blood to quench his thirst; and the robbing of a train, by three men, of $15,000, near Peru, Indiana-form part of the news budget of one daily paper last Saturday.

Quite an extensive counterfeiting institution, just getting ready for operations in this city, was taken in by San Francisco police officers and detectives on the 25th ult. It consisted of a young man giving the name of S. F. Upson, about twenty-five years of age, a large iron stamping machine of 1,500 lbs. weight, two steel dies for five-dollar pieces, crucibles, punches, and considerable working material. It was the bringing of the peculiar-looking machine across the bay that led to a surveillance of the party in charge and particlar notice as to the destination of the article. The truck was followed until its load was deposited in the basement of a neat cottage in an aristocratic part of the city, where the future enterprise evidently was to have been conducted. The young man was "shadowed" to his room in San Francisco, where the remainder of the outfit was found. We have stringent laws against counterfeiting, but they do not effectually put a stop to the crime, and the query arises, what shall be done about it? We suggest a high license upon the business. This will at least shut off the "low dives," where they stoop to counterfeiting copper pennies, while the license tax from the "respectable" establishments, where golden eagles and hundred-dollar notes would be produced, would add immensely to the revenue of the Government.