SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 6, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 1.

Read the full edition

SECULAR.

—General Marmaduke, Governor of Missouri, died on the 28th ult.

—One hundred and thirty Arab immigrants arrived at New York last week.

—The inhabitants of Sota Valley, Montenegro, are said to be suffering from famine.

—Both England and Germany will oppose Russia should she make war on Austria.

—The Bulgarian Sobranje has authorized a loan of $1,000,000 for railway construction.

—Two men were seriously burned in San Francisco on the 26th ult. by an explosion of mill-dust.

—The Russian ambassador at Berlin has assured Count Kalnoky that Russia is pursuing a policy of peace.

—The death rate among the colored people of Georgia is said to be three times as great as that of the whites.

—Gandilla, in the West Indies, recently suffered severely from a hurricane. Fifty-four buildings were destroyed.

—A snow-bound passenger train on an Iowa road was run into a few days since by a freight train, and several passengers were severely injured.

—Seventeen hundred cigar-makers in Pittsburg, Pa., have organized for the purpose of forcing all cigar-makers into factories; that is, to break up small factories.

—The amount of capital of the Southern States, including the capital stock of incorporated companies for the year 1887, was $256,298,000, as against $129,226,000 for 1886.

—It has been ascertained that the great raft which was deserted in the Atlantic by the vessel having it in tow has broken up and so is no longer dangerous to steamers.

—On the 30th of December, a railroad train went through a trestle near St. Petersburg, Pa. Seven passengers were injured, but no lives were lost. The wreck was burned.

—A family named Kelly, said to rival the infamous Benders in the number and atrocity of their crimes, were recently captured and lynched in "No Man's Land," Indian Territory.

—Near Shelbyville, Ind., one day last week, a woman aged 62 years was killed and nearly devoured by hogs. She had gone into the barn-yard to milk, when she was attacked by the brutes.

—Sixty-four persons have been made ill and eight have died in Philadelphia, Pa., from eating buns and cakes colored with chrome-yellow. Three bakers have been indicted for adulterating food.

—An infernal machine, containing a bomb, was sent to a New York school inspector one day last week. The matches arranged in the box ignited when it was opened, but the bomb failed to explode.

—A severe gale did considerable mischief on San Francisco Bay on the 28th ult. One partially laden coal schooner was capsized, a number of other vessels were damaged, and the wharves suffered considerably.

—December 26, a large part of the town of Ironwood, Mich., was destroyed by fire. About forty buildings were burned.

—Two serious race collisions occurred a few days since in Georgia. As a result of one of them five men were seriously injured, one fatally.

—The crowned heads of Europe seem to be vying with each other in doing honor to the Pope upon the occasion of his jubilee—that is, the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination as a priest of the Catholic Church.

—Portland, Me., narrowly escaped destruction by a huge tidal wave on the night of the 28th ult. The wave was sixty feet high, and had its force not been broken by huge rocks, would have overwhelmed the city.

—Advices from Auckland, New Zealand, stated that the French have annexed Raiatea. The natives were made willing by the bombardment of several of their villages. All "rebels" against French authority are to be punished.

—A few days since an insane Georgian farmer murdered his wife and six children and then killed himself. The only member of the family who escaped is a half-grown boy, who was absent on an errand at the time of the killing.

—Reports of severe storms and intensely cold weather come from various parts of Europe. In Austria a number of persons have been frozen to death. Steamers arriving at British ports report very severe weather on the Atlantic.

—An Irish clergyman, in a recent speech in Cork, charged certain local Government officials with systematically corrupting girls of a tender age. The Pall Mall Gazette says that only one official, a trusted agent of Dublin Castle, is implicated.

—A number of Gloucester, Mass., fishermen are transferring their business to ports on Puget Sound. Cod are said to be abundant along the coast of Alaska, and it is to those fishing grounds that the Gloucester schooners will resort.

—The majority of the Pacific Railroad Commission will recommend to Congress that the time for the payment of the debt which the roads owe the Government be extended fifty years, and that the rate of interest be reduced to three per cent.

—Three hundred feet of the wharf at Port Harford, San Luis Obispo County, Cal., was burned on the night of the 24th ult. Ten freight cars, and one hundred and twenty tons of merchandise, besides grain and other produce, were destroyed.

—Hibernia, a small mining town in New Jersey, was the scene of a miners' riot, December 26, in which over fifty men were more or less seriously injured, and one killed outright. The belligerents were Russian and Hungarian miners, and the exciting cause was whisky.

—The New York World is authority for the statement that there are at present in that city 100,000 persons out of employment. The employment agencies are full of people looking for work, and every night the police stations are crowded with persons who are unable to pay for lodging.

—A year ago General Alger, a Detroit millionaire, gave a suit of clothes to each of 300 newsboys in that city and sent coal, wood, and flour to hundreds of poor families. This year the newsboys were again remembered, and 1,000 poor families were each supplied with a ton of coal and a barrel of flour.

—On the 29th ult. cold weather was reported all along the Atlantic coast, and storm signals were up from Maine to Florida. At New York the velocity of the wind was forty-eight miles per hour, with the thermometer only 14° above zero. Several deaths from exposure are reported from various quarters.

—December 31, a frightful railroad collision occurred near Meadville, Pa. Five persons were killed and thirteen seriously injured. The colliding trains were running at an aggregate speed of sixty miles per hour. The same day two minor disasters occurred, one in Indiana and the other in Kentucky. Several were reported killed in the latter accident.

—In Chicago, December 30, a stove was accidentally overturned in a hall where a holiday celebration was in progress. The Superintendent thoughtlessly yelled, "Fire," at which the great crowd of children were seized with panic, and in attempting to escape almost all were injured and one was killed. The Superintendent was placed under arrest.

—The Mexican Government has granted the right of way to a San Francisco capitalist for a railroad to commence at Tepic, State of Jalisco, and run northwest, touching a number of important cities and connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad at Yuma. The road will pass through some of the richest mining country in the world, and is to be built by a combination of American and European capital.