SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 19, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 44.

SECULAR.

—About 450,000 boxes of raisins have been cured in California this season.

—Ten men lost their lives by an explosion in a mine at Silver Cliff, Col., November 13.

—At Tacoma, W. T., twenty-six persons were recently indicted for intimidating Chinese.

—The Princess Royal, a vessel carrying a cargo of furs valued at $1,000,000, was wrecked in a recent gale on Hudson's Bay.

—China is making preliminary surveys for a telegraph line from Teintsin to Seoul, the capital of Corea, a distance of about five hundred miles.

—Servia has declared war on Bulgaria, and active hostilities have begun. The Servians have invaded Bulgaria at three points, driving the Bulgarians before them.

—In a speech at Edinburg last week, Gladstone advocated the making of concessions to Ireland. He said: "I am confident that England will never repent giving perfect equality to Ireland."

—The steamer Algonia, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was wrecked on Lake Superior on the morning of November 9. There were over fifty persons on board, of whom only fifteen were saved.

—October 6, a terrible cyclone passed through Dallas, Perry, and Bibb Counties, Ala., destroying everything before it. Up to the 9th inst., thirteen persons had been found killed, and forty or fifty dangerously wounded.

—J. E. Buttler's ranch, in El Dorado County, Cal., was visited by a cyclone, November 7. A chicken house, a part of his dwelling-house, and two big barns were entirely demolished. This is a new experience for California.

—On the 13th inst., a fire devoured over fifty blocks of the city of Galveston, Texas. The district burnt over is about 100 acres in extent, and the money loss is over $2,000,000. The actual loss, however, is much greater, as over 600 residences, occupied by about 800 families, were consumed. A large number of the residences burned were the finest in the city.

—Governor Stanford proposes to donate $20,000,000 for the founding of a university in California. Of this sum $5,300,000 is in real estate, the Governor's fine ranches in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, on which the university buildings are to be erected. It is believed that if this princely gift is wisely used, California may possess a college which will successfully rival the older institutions of the East, including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

—Late dispatches state that England is about to make war on King Theebaw, of Upper Burmah, whose acts of brutal cruelty have made him so infamous. The latest report is that he has ordered the extermination of all the Englishmen in his kingdom, and this bloody order may already have been carried out. Burmah will no doubt be added to England's possessions in India. French papers declare that the British expedition to Burmah is really aimed at France.

—General A. C. Jones, for six years United States Consul-General to Japan, arrived in San Francisco November 7. He thinks Japan has a splendid future before her. She has magnificent resources. Her people have the ability and the character to receive and retain improved methods, and their intercourse with Europeans will bring about such a change in Japanese ideas and habits as will make the empire of the Mikado the most prosperous and civilized of the Oriental countries.

—The Interior Department has been investigating Brigham Young's land transactions, and finds that frauds were perpetrated on a large scale. Families would erect temporary houses on sections of Government land, occupy them a few days, sow a few handfuls of grain, and then swear to the necessary statements to obtain a title. This title they would turn over to Brigham Young. The "prophet" thus secured possession of 37,000 acres of land in the fertile

Cache Valley. After his death, the church took possession of this land.

—One of the large English war vessels, the Resistance, is to be coated with India rubber to a considerable thickness, to see how the material will repel projectiles.

—A company of Americans and Peruvians has been formed for the purpose of supplying electric lights to the cities and towns of Peru, under exclusive grants from that Government.

—The experiments of Dr. Louis Pasteur, the French scientist, for the cure of hydrophobia by means of inoculation, have been pronounced successful by the Academy of Sciences.

—Diamonds are now found in Australia to such an extent that a company has been formed to work the deposits, and machines similar to those used in the African diamond fields have been ordered. Two or three parcels of stone have already been shipped to England. It is claimed that the stones are finer and more valuable than those from the Cape.

—William Manson has invented a very useful well-boring apparatus, with which he has lately sunk two wells for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to the depth of 2,000 feet each. He is now boring wells in San Bernardino, Cal., where one well was sunk 100 feet in a day and a half. The apparatus is worked by a ten-horse power engine, and will bore through any soil or bowlders.