p. 14 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 13, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 2.

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—Liquor license in Atlanta, Ga., has been fixed at $10,000.

—About 11,000 flint-glass workers are now out on a strike in the United States.

—Hon. Eugene Semple has been appointed Governor of Washington Territory.

—A large deposit of excellent coal has been discovered near San Antonio, Texas.

—During the year 1887 there were landed at Castle Garden 371,619 immigrants.

—According to the calendar of the Russo-Greek Church, January 6 was Christmas.

—Parties in the East are being swindled into buying lots in bogus towns in California.

—Ex-Governor Joel Parker, war Governor of New Jersey, died of paralysis on the 1st inst.

—A Russian spy with maps and other papers in his possession, has been arrested in Austria.

—A fire in the Brooklyn Navy Yard January 6 destroyed property to the amount of $200,000.

—Twenty-six persons were killed in a railroad collision near Meppel, Holland, on the 4th inst.

—An institution is to be founded in London for the education of nurses to work among the poor.

—It is said that Gladstone, who is now in Italy, will confer with the Pope relative to Irish affairs.

—The Servian Skupshtina has voted a loan of $4,000,000 to pay off the floating debt of that country.

—The bursting of a canal near Dudley, England, a few days since, rendered hundreds of families homeless.

—The New Year was ushered in by violent storms on the Atlantic Coast, and numerous wrecks are reported.

—January 5 the English steamer Maude foundered in the Black Sea, and twelve persons were drowned.

—A saloon for the sale of beer has been opened in the National Soldiers' Home west of Milwaukee, Wis.

—Four Mormon postmasters are now under indictment in Southern Utah for defrauding the Government.

—It is stated that the Southern Pacific Company has not a sufficient number of locomotives to handle its immense business.

—The great Lick telescope has at last been successfully mounted at the Mount Hamilton observatory, near San Jose, Cal.

—It is proposed to reserve the two principal canyons in New Mexico, once inhabited by cave-dwellers, as national parks.

—During a portion of a recent storm, snow fell on "the Switchback" on the Northern Pacific Railroad, at the rate of a foot per hour.

—Recent heavy storms of rain and snow have to some extent interfered with the work of the transcontinental railroad and telegraph lines.

—A decree has been published in Roumania, fixing the number of recruits for 1888 at 44,500. This is a large increase for the Roumanian army.

—Copious showers have recently visited every portion of California. Thus far this season the rainfall for the State has been above the average.

—On the 1st inst. the San Francisco express from Portland ran into a landslide in Southern Oregon, and two of the train men were instantly killed.

—It is stated that a syndicate has been organized with headquarters at Chicago, to purchase 20,000,000 acres of land in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

—An attempt will be made to secure in England the capital necessary to build the Eads ship railway. Fifty millions of dollars will be required to build the road.

—The premature explosion of a blast a few days since, on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, in Pennsylvania, killed four men and seriously wounded seven others.

—In a recent storm on the Oregon coast, the waves dashed over Tillamook lighthouse, 190 feet above the sea level. The glass in the tower was broken.

—The continent of Europe has recently been visited by very heavy snow-storms. Railroads have been blockaded, and a number of people have been frozen to death.

—During the last three months, earthquake shocks have been of frequent occurrence in Mexico. The last one reported occurred only a few days since at the City of Mexico.

—Heavy rains in Southern California have recently interfered seriously with the running of trains. Washouts have been numerous, and some accidents have resulted.

—A sad state of affairs still continues in Ireland. Evictions are of frequent occurrence, and at this inclement season much suffering is, in many cases, experienced by ousted tenants.

—In the collapse of a colored Baptist Church building at Torytown, Ala., on New Year's eve, three persons were killed outright, and about thirty were more or less seriously injured.

—The bark Alfred D. Snow, a wheat ship from San Francisco, was wrecked a few days since, on the coast of Ireland, and the twenty-nine men who constituted her crew were all drowned.

—On the night of January 1 the engine house of a New York gas company was mysteriously blown up, and recent investigations lead to the belief that dynamite was the cause of the wreck.

—San Diego, Cal., is probably growing more rapidly than any other city in the United States. The amount of freight arriving there during 1887, was 145,000 tons as against 43,000 tons in 1886.

—In 1881, California produced 90,000 boxes of raisins, and 1,036,794 boxes were imported into the United States from Malaga; but in 1887, California produced 1,000,000 boxes and only 452,000 were imported.

—In Alleghany City, Pa., a few days since, about fifty boys ranging in age from 8 to 14 years, engaged in a free fight in which stones, knives, and revolvers were freely used. One boy was fatally wounded by a bullet.

—At Fulton, Ky., a few evenings since, two unruly white boys were ejected from a house where a company of colored people were dancing. One of the boys procured a shot-gun and fired two charges of buckshot into the crowd in the house, seriously wounding seven persons.

—About forty Catholic Poles in attendance at a christening party at Alden, Pa., on the 5th inst., became intoxicated and the party was transformed into a drunken mob. One man was fatally and eight seriously injured.

—Last week exceeding cold weather was experienced throughout a large portion of the United States. The cold was most severe in Montana and Dakota. At Belgrade, Montana, the spirit thermometer registered 52° below zero.

—An explosion in a beer-hall in New York on the morning of the 1st inst., seriously injured six waiters. A large number of people had left the hall only a few moments before the catastrophe. The cause of the explosion is not known.

—Galveston, Texas, proposes to repudiate a debt of $1,000,000 saddled upon the city by carpet-baggers twenty years ago. The courts have ordered the payment of the debt, but the city will, if necessary, surrender its charter rather than pay it.

—They must have queer ideas of reform in some parts of Texas. On the 4th inst. a body of armed citizens, styling themselves "Reformers," shot one man and hanged two others. It is to be hoped that such reform as that will not become general.

—Political affairs in the Hawaiian Kingdom are in a very unsettled condition. The so-called reform party now in power have not met the public expectation, and their overthrow at almost any time would not, it is said, be a matter of surprise.

—During the past year the volume of mail matter passing between this country and some of the Central and South American republics, has increased more than two hundred per cent. In the case of Venezuela the increase was two hundred and thirty per cent.

—Santa Rosa's (Cal.) City Council has instructed the city attorney to draw up an ordinance prohibiting dealers from selling cigarettes to youths under 10 years of age, and also making it a penal offense for children under that age to smoke the same. A leading San Francisco daily advocates a similar ordinance for that city.

—A Bismarck, D. T. dispatch of the 7th inst. says: "The terrific snow-storm which has been raging throughout the Northwest for a week past shows no signs of abatement. It is the heaviest storm known in the history of the Territory. Small houses on the outskirts of the city are completely covered with snow. Traffic is rendered entirely out of the question."

—Further details of the overflow of the Hoang-Ho reveal a terrible state of suffering as the result of the inundation. The overflowed territory embraced nearly 10,000 square miles of territory in what has been called the Garden of China, and has a population of nearly 4,000,000 souls. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost by drowning, and now famine threatens thousands more.

—January 3, a riot occurred at Jefferson barracks, Mo., between white and colored United States troops. The men were more or less intoxicated, and though disarmed by the officer of the day refused to retire to their quarters, and, leaving the barracks, engaged in a terrible battle with knives, sticks, and stones, till compelled to desist by sheer exhaustion. Several of the belligerents were mortally wounded.