SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 15, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 19.

SECULAR.

—The sunset afterglow has re-appeared in India. —The Morrison tariff bill has been defeated in Congress. —A plague is raging in the province of Bagdad, in Asiatic Turkey. —Jose Duarte, of Albuquerque, N. M., is charged with hanging his own son. —The extra session of the California Legislature adjourned on the 13th inst. —A relief expedition, numbering 8,000 men, will start for Khartoum in July. —A Siamese Embassy is now in this country examining tools, machinery, and fire-arms. —The Mexican Government's circular modifying the Stamp Act gives general satisfaction. —Rabbits and quail are said to be doing much damage in the vineyards about St. Helena, Cal. —Depression in the English ship-building trades have thrown 20,000 men out of employment. —The Pennsylvania and New Jersey fires, noted last week, were finally extinguished by rain. —A strong gas well was struck last week on Gen. Rosecrans' place in Los Angeles County, Cal. —The King of Abyssinia refuses to permit Egyptian troops to enter the Soudan from his dominions. —Dissension exists among the Chinese and Black Flags, and there has been desperate fighting between them. —Zorilla, the Spanish Republican leader, has been expelled from France, at the instance of Alfonso's Government. —The Austrian Government has lately issued rigorous regulations respecting beautifiers, hair dyes, patent medicines, etc. —A Syracuse, N. Y., dispatch says that eighteen carloads of English paupers passed that city last week en route to Dakota. —The Lake Superior Copper Mining Co. has closed a contract for furnishing 12,000,000 pounds of copper at 14 cents per pound. —About three acres of ground at Zanesville, Ohio, suddenly sank on the 11th inst., leaving a fissure about 150 feet deep. No person was injured. —By July 1st upwards of fifty new money-order offices will be established in California. The additional bond required of postmasters is $3,000 and upwards. —During a heavy thunder-storm in London, last week, a ball of fire fell in the street and burst with a loud report, terrifying the residents who witnessed it. —On the 10th inst., Henry Casey, while being examined at Redwood City, Cal., for assaulting a girl at a picnic at Belmont, was fatally shot in court by the girl's father.

—Two English railway companies, owing to depression of trade, have discharged 2,500 employees and reduced the salaries of clerks 10 per cent. —John B. Gough, the noted temperance lecturer, is about to start on a lecturing tour across the continent, and is expected to reach San Francisco about June 3d. —Germany and Austria are discussing common measures looking to the supervision of the production and sale of dangerous explosives. England and France are not invited to participate. —The miners about Tombstone, Arizona, have organized a union and struck for $4.00 per day. Superintendents decline to yield to the demand, and work has been generally suspended. —The devil has taught a German farmer, who resides near Pittsburg, Pa., how to make solidified whisky, pressing it into plugs. New York speculators have offered him $100,000 for the invention. —The new imperial palace at Strasbourg, Germany, is to be completed in three years, at a cost of $1,250,000. It seems a preposterous piece of extravagance, as the emperor has a dozen palaces already. —In Newton County, Ark., on the 3d inst., revenue officers raided an illicit distillery, which was dismantled and the mash-tubs destroyed. A fight occurred, and one distiller was killed and another wounded. —A "humpback" turtle was found in Monterey Bay the other day and captured. It was seven feet seven inches in length, four feet across the back, and had two fins three feet long. It weighed one thousand pounds. —Suspected Nihilists are being arrested in St. Petersburg daily, numbering men and women in prominent stations. Several artillery officers have been apprehended, also a number of students at the Moscow University.

—ST. JOHN, N. F., May 10.—The Grand Jury to-day found five true bills against nineteen of the Catholics who participated in the Harbor Grace affray in December last, for the willful murder of James French, Nicolas Bray, and Callaghan.

—The Paris Gaulois says: Before leaving Rome, Errington had a conference of an hour with the pope, who expressed satisfaction at the prospect of a renewal of direct relations between England and the Vatican. Cardinal Jacobini gave Errington a statement of concessions required by the Vatican.

—The steamer Titania arrived at Montreal on the 8th inst., bringing rescued passengers of the lost steamer State of Florida, mentioned in our news department last week. The Florida was sunk in mid-ocean by collision with a bark. From both vessels, which went down in a short time after the accident occurred, 137 persons were lost.

—A steamer recently arrived at New York with 416 Mormon converts in the steerage, and twenty-two missionaries in the cabin. The converts are said to represent nearly every European nation except Irish. One of the missionaries said there was no use trying to convert the Irish; but, he added, "they are not a class we care to handle. They are too enthusiastic and spasmodic; they would surely bring us into trouble. We always keep away from Ireland for that reason."

—Jas. R. Keene, the great California speculator of Wall Street, N. Y., has failed. He went to New York in 1876 with $5,000,000. Up to 1880 his ventures were prosperous, and he was worth $12,000,000. Since that time, however, he has been losing much of the time. He is said to have lost $5,000,000 in his great grain speculation two or three years ago. He finally became reckless in his endeavors to retrieve his lost fortune, but all to no purpose. In the last six months, he is said to have lost $4,000,000.

—A Laredo dispatch says: "American capital has no safeguard in Mexico at present. Recently the newsboys on the Mexican National railway running out of Laredo into Mexico have been put off the train with their American publications because an article in a paper did not suit the powers that be. The costly and magnificent club and hotel buildings erected by the construction companies of Jay Gould's extension of the International road into Mexico have been seized and appropriated by the civil authorities of New Laredo, because of some alleged failure to comply with some regulations of the general Government. Conductor King, on the Mexican National Railway, between Laredo and Monterey, last week, on a trip to the latter point, put off the train a Mexican who was traveling without a ticket or pass. On his return to New Laredo, he was arrested and placed in jail."