Notes of News | AdventAI

The Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1879

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 54, No. 21

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Notes of News.

—The Hungarian budget shows a deficit of $9,000,000.

—A Swiss colony has purchased a tract of 75,000 acres in Nebraska.

—The President has appointed Thursday, Nov. 27, as a day of thanksgiving.

—During the year 1878 there were 103 earthquakes and 12 volcanic eruptions.

—The railroad riot at Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1877, will cost Allegheny county $2,750,000.

—The yield of the anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania is now 20,000,000 tons per annum.

—The Spanish government has voted £18,000 per annum for the use of their future queen.

—Of the missionaries sent out last year by the American Board, five were children of missionaries.

—The Municipal Council of Berlin recommends the universal adoption of the practice of cremation.

—The Emperor William is said to be unwilling to sanction a policy of open hostility toward Russia.

—Charles Freeman, of the Pocasset tragedy, has been indicted for murder in the first degree.

—Secretary Sherman considers it possible to effect a reduction of $50,000,000 in the national debt next year.

—Jacob Abbott, the well-known author of the “Rollo Books” and other works for the young, died Oct. 31.

—It is stated that King Mtesa, of Central Africa, has been converted, and has freed his slaves, about half a million.

—The Ameer of Afghanistan has been accused of treachery, and it is thought he will be sent a State prisoner to India.

—It is thought that the specie imported into this country from Europe during the year 1879 will amount to $75,000,000.

—The daily Inter-Ocean of Nov. 10 records the wreck of two steamers and two schooners, involving the loss of 49 lives.

—The African king Mtesa has forbidden Sunday labor, and has been seriously discussing with his chiefs the evils of polygamy.

—Nearly 5,000 women and girls, of whom 4,502 are under 16 years of age, are still employed about the coal mines of Great Britain.

—The closing of our centennial anniversaries of revolutionary events will occur October, 23, 1881, in commemoration of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

—The Montenegrins, in a recent march on Gusinje, besides pillaging and burning everything before them, killed more than 300 Albanian Mussulmans.

—The Porte is too poor to provision the pilgrimage to Mecca this year. This is something that has never before occurred since the foundation of the Ottoman empire.

—A Paris paper asserts that the ex-Empress Eugenie, notwithstanding all efforts to dissuade her, will embark next February for Zululand, to pray on the spot where her son was killed.

—During the third week in October a second crop of strawberries was gathered from the same vines at Martha’s Vineyard. Blackberry vines in a garden in Cambridgeport also yielded a second crop.

—At a meeting held in San Francisco on the evening of Nov. 6, a proposition was made to organize a secret society to be called the Jacobin Society. Their object is to hang all employers of Chinese labor.

—The Missionary Herald counts up over $3,000,000 given to the missionary enterprises of the Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist, Wesleyan, and Congregational churches, by only a dozen givers, within the past year.

—The general omnibus company of Paris subdues vicious horses by the use of electricity. By means of a small induction machine the wires of which communicate with the bit of the bridle, a weak current of electricity is passed into the mouth, when the animal’s will seems to be almost annihilated.

—A leading manufacturer in Sheffield, England, the other day, showed his workmen an assortment of American made goods, and taking up a pair of tailor’s shears, offered to give the Union £50 if any of his men in a month would produce a pair of shears as good as the American. The challenge was not accepted.

—There are 87 Indian reservations within the limits of the United States, including 139,201,000 acres of land. This would give to each of the 242,371 Indians maintaining tribal forms, over 500 acres,—a reasonable competency, if they could be induced to abandon a nomad life.

—The great discoveries of the lamented missionary explorer, Dr. Livingstone, are to be utilized for the benefit of civilization and commerce. A company of Manchester merchants is to be formed with a capital of $10,000,000, for the building of a railroad from the river Zambesi to the northern coast of Zanzibar.

—The great tunnel to connect Jersey City and New York is to cost $10,000,000. It is to be 26 feet wide, 24 feet high, and 12,000 feet long, reaching from Jersey City to Broadway, New York. The ceiling will be lined with brick and cement. The time of car transit will be six minutes. It is intended to complete it in three years.

—On the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the pope will, it is said, offer indulgences to the faithful. The Independent thus comments on the above: “Of course, he will. We, who believe he is a more liberal pope than his predecessor, do not imagine that he is going to reverse one single utterance of Pius IX.”

—A correspondent of the Christian Union, speaking of the chain-gangs of Atlanta, Ga., says that the slave-driver of the South is not extinct. Convicts, with a chain from the ankle to the waist, are employed on the public works of the city. But cruel and degrading as this punishment is, it is yet merciful to what it becomes on isolated plantations and in lonely villages, where convicts are leased to men whose control over them is absolute.

—An attempt was recently made in London, England, to open the Guild-Hall Library to the young men of that city on the only day of leisure they possess. The bishop of Manchester bore testimony to the good effects of a similar movement in that city, and many of the clergy of St. Paul’s favored the young men’s cause. The contest was a severe one, but was decided against opening the library on Sunday, by a vote of 104 to 34.

—The railway destined to carry tourists to the top of Mt. Vesuvius is fast progressing toward completion. The station is 2,500 feet above the level of the sea, and the line, which will be rather less than 1000 yards in length, rises from thence at an incline which averages 56 feet in 100, but reaches, at its steepest part, 63 feet in 100. The rails are laid on a wooden platform like a gigantic raft, the lava and crumbling soil being much too unsteady to form a proper bed for the sleepers.

—The Roman Catholic bishops of Belgium have declared their intention to relax no effort to secure for the children a religious education. They say that it is not enough that the Catholic faith is respected; it must be taught and practiced. The teachers who continue to teach in the “godless schools” have been excommunicated, and the sacrament has been refused to the children. A similar controversy on the subject of education is being carried on in France and Australia.

—The Commissioner of Patents reports that during the year ending June 30, 19,300 applications for patents were received; 2,674 caveats filed; 12,471 patents issued; 1,547 trade marks and labels registered; 828 patents granted, but held for the payment of final fees. The receipts of the office were $703,000, being $154,000 in excess of the expenditures. The Commissioner declares the force of the office should be materially increased, and more room and better facilities for the conduct of its work be provided. An increased appropriation is asked for.

—In another year it is expected that the famous Cologne Cathedral will be completed strictly according to the original plan. The first stone of this edifice was laid Aug. 15, 1248, and now the two towers have only to be fitted with their massive caps of solid stone-work. To accomplish this, it is necessary to erect two great scaffoldings to a dizzy height, and one of these is already finished. After the caps are completed, gigantic foliated crosses nearly 30 feet high are to be erected upon the top of them to crown the towers. The name of the designer of this wonderful cathedral is lost in the obscurity of the Dark Ages.

—Preparations for the next European war, the outbreak of which seems rapidly becoming more imminent, would appear now to be conducted under the guise of neutralizing efforts. Thus, Germany has discovered that the French fortress of Belfort must be neutralized; and, to neutralize it, is constructing an immense fortified camp at New Biersack, near the left bank of the Rhine. So the work of exhausting the resources of the people in men and money continues, and, under the burdens of the immense armaments maintained and constantly being increased, the question underlying all European politics is coming to be, Which of the great powers will first break down under the weight of its own military establishment?

—The contest between England and Russia for the ascendancy in the councils of the Porte, which now attracts so much attention in foreign politics, is but another of those accidents of the situation which for so long have conspired to uphold that anomaly and disgrace in continental affairs, Turkey in Europe. As hitherto, the expulsion of the Turks from the continent is deferred only because of the impossibility of agreement among the great powers as to the partition of the territory now occupied by the Ottoman empire. And so, while England presses her demands upon Turkey for what is styled reform, Russia, the traditional foe of the Porte, covertly encourages the latter to non-compliance; and meanwhile nothing is done, the Turkish government holding the question under advisement, and the orders for the dispatch of the British squadron to Vourlah seem to have been suspended.