p. 638 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 40.

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SECULAR.

—Peru is still in a deplorable condition because of internal war.

—A severe storm raged along the eastern coast of New York, October 13.

—Two Mormons, at Salt Lake, received the usual sentence, October 17.

—The first rain-storm of the season visited Oakland, Cal., October 13.

—Lord Salisbury officially announces that Parliament will be dissolved November 17.

—The small-pox plague seems to have a first mortgage on the doomed city of Montreal.

—Japan has 314 miles of railroad in complete working order, and 800 miles more in construction.

—H. W. Shaw, known as "Josh Billings," died of apoplexy at the Hotel del Monte, Monterey, Cal., October 10.

—In order to prove his friendly disposition towards Spain, the sultan of Morocco has presented thirteen camels to Don Alfonso.

—The editor of the Deseret News, a Mormon organ at Salt Lake, was sent to the penitentiary, October 13, for unlawful cohabitation.

—Louis Riel, leader of the half-breed rebellion, who has lately been found guilty, is to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

—Two boys were drowned at Williams' Landing, near Santa Cruz, Cal., October 12. Nine persons have been washed off the rocks at the same place, and drowned.

—The French are attempting to carry out the same tactics in Madagascar as they carried out in Tonquin. Of this action the San Francisco Chronicle justly says: "They are playing the part of bully, just as England played it in the Ashantee and Zulu wars."

—The Southern Pacific Railroad bridge across the Colorado at Fort Yuma, was totally destroyed by fire, October 17. The cost of the bridge is estimated at $150,000.

—Charles Crocker, one of the parties largely interested in the building recently burned in San Francisco, has donated $5,000 to the relatives of the two firemen who lost their lives in the fire.

—The detectives and police of Rochester, N. Y., find proof of the workings of a house of ill fame; in some respects it seems to have been similar to that exposed by the Pall Mall Gazette.

—On the morning of October 15, a heavy shock of earthquake at Palermo, Sicily, shook down a three-story house, burying its occupants beneath the debris. Eight corpses were taken out from the ruins.

—The owners of the ship Earl of Dalhousie, which was capsized in San Francisco Bay as the tug Relief was towing her for Oakland, have brought suit for $100,000 against the owners of the tug.

—While the Mormons in the United States are beginning to have justice dealt out to them, new converts to their religion are arriving daily from Europe. Immigration of this sort ought to be prohibited by law.

—At Edgefield, S. C., a few days ago, twenty-two well-known citizens were marched off to jail, charged with murder in lynching O. L. Culbreth, who was suspected of having assassinated a young man named Wm. Hammond.

—The Navy Department recently received word that the Spanish Government is having five cruisers built at a cost of $1,500,000. These vessels, which are being built by the English, are to be according to the most improved modern design.

—The contract for carrying the Australian mails has been given to the Union line, and the steamers Australia and Zealandia will carry the mails from Auckland to Honolulu, and the Oceanic Steamship Company from Honolulu to San Francisco.

—Acting under imperative orders from President Diaz, the governor who dispossessed the American miners from Las Cruces silver mines in Mexico, has been compelled to surrender the mines to their American owners. This is done through the intervention of Secretary Bayard.

—The Czar of Russia has issued a ukase forbidding a general celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the emancipation of serfs in Russia, which was to take place March 3, 1886. The Czar, it is said, found good reason to suspect that this celebration was to be made a ruse for a nihilistic rising.

—A dispatch of the 3d inst., stating that Germany had acknowledged the Spanish occupation of Yap, and that Spain had granted Germany the privilege of free navigation and commerce in the waters of the Carolines, and the right of establishing a coaling station on one of the islands, is officially confirmed.

—Ten members of a gang of counterfeiters have recently been arrested and placed in jail at Pittsburg, Pa. This gang was strongly organized into a secret society, having grips and pass-words. They did their manufacturing in the mountains somewhere in the western part of Pennsylvania, and flooded the country with bogus coins ranging from ten cents to a dollar.

—On the evening of October 15, District Attorney Hall, of Alameda County, was walking to his home in Oakland, when he heard a cry of "Police! he's got my purse." The purse snatcher was running toward Mr. Hall, who arrested him and lodged him in prison. In court he pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to seven years in San Quentin. All this within twenty-four hours.

—The excuse for the Roumelian and Bulgarian union seems to be the poverty-stricken condition of Roumelia on account of the great expenses of running a Government alone. On the 16th inst., King Milan, of Servia, crossed with his troops into Bulgaria. It looks now as if the difficulties would be settled by Bulgaria granting Servia a small portion of her territory, and the union under Prince Alexander acknowledged.

—The cruise of the Corwin to the Arctic regions has been quite successful in rescuing some forty-nine whalers from a watery grave, and in discovery and exploration. A party with great difficulty explored the Kowak River for a distance of 520 miles, to its source in four great lakes. The largest of these lakes is situated in longitude about 153° west, and latitude 67° north. Another party from the Corwin explored, for a distance of 400 miles, the Noitak River, which flows into Hotham Inlet, Arctic Ocean, most of the way through a mountainous country.

—On the afternoon of October 17, while the wife of Jean Baptiste Romilly, residing about ten miles from Toronto, Canada, accompanied by her two-year-old child, was feeding her fowls, a large bald-headed eagle swooped down and bore the little one off in its talons. The neighbors turned out with shot-guns, but the only effect of their firing was to accelerate the eagle's flight. The bird alighted on the top of a barn a mile away, and was seen to make several strokes at the child's head with its beak. The neighbors had got pretty close by this time, and succeeded in frightening the eagle away. The child's body was recovered, but life was extinct, a hole having been made in its skull and a portion of the brain devoured by the bird.