NOTES OF NEWS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 5, 1878

NOTES OF NEWS.

—Paris contributed $24,000 for the relief of the Southern yellow-fever sufferers.

—In consequence of a strike, 3,000 workmen of the glass factories of Pittsburgh are out of employment.

—Over 60,000 Bibles have been sent from Philadelphia to Australia and the antipodes since January.

—Of 177,936 volumes issued to the readers of the mercantile library of New York last year, 108,864 were works of fiction.

—There is a report, apparently well founded, that General Grant has been proposed for the Bulgarian throne.

—There are now over 22,286,000 more acres of farm land under cultivation in this country than there were four years ago.

—On one Sunday 7,668 children, under 14 years of age, entered the public houses of Edinburgh for intoxicating drink.

—English speculators have sold about 15 tons of stone by the ounce, as specimens of Cleopatra’s Needle, which still remains whole and unbroken.

—The Marquis of Lorne and the Princess Louise landed at Halifax, N. S., Nov. 25, and were received with great pomp and enthusiasm.

—A fire at Cape May, the attractive watering place on the Jersey shore, Nov. 9, swept over 40 acres, consuming 9 hotels, 21 cottages, about one thousand bathing houses, and a pier.

—About midnight, Nov. 25, the Hamberg-American line steamship Pommerania, from New York for Hamberg, came in collision with the Welsh bark Noel Eilian, in the British Channel. The Pommerania sank in thirty minutes. Between 40 and 50 lives were lost.

—Candahar, the objective point of the British army moving from Quettah, is a city of 60,000 inhabitants, and a place of political, commercial, and military importance. It is on the great road between Persia and Western Afghanistan on one side, and India and Eastern Afghanistan on the other.

—The Christian Weekly says: “There are intimations that Miss Hosmer, the celebrated American sculptress residing in Rome, has made a discovery which, by a novel application of the permanent magnet for a motive power, promises to make a thorough revolution in machinery.”

—The Czar presented a sword to the Ameer of Afghanistan. General Kauffman made the presentation speech, and in it assured the Afghans that Russia knows how to protect her allies from the attacks of any enemy, however powerful. Russia seems not to hold herself responsible for the General’s action in the matter.

—The Russian Greek church possesses 38,692 churches, including cathedrals; 12,860 chapels and oratories; 18,887 arch-priests, priests, deacons, and precentors; 56,500,000 members, of which 29,000,000 are women, and 27,000,000 are men. The sums received by the church during the year amount to $9,000,000.

—According to the director of the mint, during the past year $47,236,107 was produced from the mines of the country in gold, and $46,776,814, in silver. About $3,000,000 of the precious metals was used in the arts and manufactures, and about $8,000,000 was exported. There is not far from $832,443,000 of gold and silver bullion in the country.

—The papal hierarchy having been established in Protestant Scotland, a great Roman Catholic monastery has been opened at Fort Augustus in the heart of the Highlands. The site was given by Lord Lovat, and the buildings are to cost about $200,000. Schools taught by nuns are multiplying fast in Scotland; they are now found in most of the large towns. Their low charges make them popular.

—The war between England and Afghanistan has commenced. The English troops stationed at Jamrood, under General Brown, have taken the Afghan frontier fort Ali Musjid, and advanced still farther in the Khyber Pass. Below the fort, the pass varies in width from 40 to 290 feet, and the mountains on each side rise to the height of 1,500 feet. On these mountains the Afghans have collected to the number of 4,000, breaking General Brown’s communications. The Ameer is strengthening Cabul.

—An approximate statement of the affairs of the firm of Smith, Fleming & Co., of London, whose failure was announced Oct. 3, shows the gross liabilities to be $14,557,425, of which $8,132,975 is expected to rank against the estate. The assets, after the costs of liquidation are paid, will not yield two shillings on the pound. The Times’ financial column says: “One of the parties has stated that the house would have stopped long ago but for the intervention of the manager of the City of Glasgow Bank. Whoever may be responsible for it, this failure must be ranked among the most disgraceful and disastrous of our time.”

—In view of Russia’s promise to aid the Ameer in case England presses the war in Afghanistan so far as to endanger Russian interests in Asia, there seems to be some point to the following from the Inter-Ocean: “Even so conservative a journal as the Toronto Globe admits that were it not for the gravity of the situation there would be something laughable in the exactness with which Russia is said to be meting out to England English treatment of Russia during the Russo-Turkish war. The Globe holds that the obtaining of an impregnable frontier in Afghanistan is just as important to Russia as to England, and that Russia is justified in being a little exacting.”