News and Miscellany

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 15, 1875

News and Miscellany.

The number of youths under seventeen years old, in Oakland, shows an increase of over one thousand in the last year.

A special from Paris says the Memorial Diplomatique newspaper announces that the Turkish students in Paris have been ordered to leave. The money hitherto devoted to the education of these youths will establish institutions at Constantinople, offering equal advantages to those of Paris.

FEMALE JOURNALISTS.—It is stated that there are fifty-seven women actually editing newspapers in this country. The female reporters, general writers, etc., engaged on the press are numbered by hundreds. Four women are now editing and publishing papers in California—one in Stockton, one in Santa Barbara, one in Mendocino county, and one in Folsom.

A dispatch of June 8 reports that an insurrection has been broken out against the Turks in Herzegovina. The women, children, and old men have been sent to Dalmatia for safety. Turkish troops are marching against the insurgents, Austria has sents two battalions of infantry to Mekorrch on the frontier of Herzegovina.

MORE FLOODS IN FRANCE.—The rivers Touque and Orbiquet overflowed their banks July 8 inundating the town of Lisioux and environs. In consequence of the heavy and continual rains, floods are feared in the valleys of the Seine, Marno, and Soane. Subscriptions for the sufferers are being taken at various points. A meeting was held last week to start one in San Francisco.

A STRANGE STORY.—There is a young colored woman in Oskaloosa (Kan.) who has a strange history, if the story told by herself and friends be true. She is called Maggie Adams, and is about seventeen years of age. Until recently she had lived with a family named Allen in the south part of the county, who came from Missouri to Kansas. During all the years since the war she has been in a state of slavery, receiving nothing for her work, being compelled to do washing, etc., for various families, allowed no books or opportunities for learning, and kept in ignorance of the fact that she was no longer a slave. She was kept so jealously guarded that she knew nothing whatever of the abolition of slavery, and was only enlightened and her release procured by a young colored man who somehow learned of the facts and went to work to have her set at liberty.—Leavenworth (Kan.) Times.

ERUPTIONS IN ICELAND.—A report from London under date of June 12, gives the following account of recent violent subterranean phenomena in Iceland:

It seems that the outbreak began on Christmas and has continued ever since with scarce any interruption. For seven weeks before Christmas the inhabitants were terrified by subterranean noises like thunder, which extended through nearly two-thirds of the island. Early in January followed earthquakes in all directions, and at last an old extinct volcano near Vatraykud, opened, and for four weeks continued to eject immense quantities of liquid fire, lava, ashes, and muddy fluid mass at boiling heat. The village, and some smaller hamlets and farms within a radius of twenty miles, were destroyed, and over a thousand people had to flee for their lives.

After four weeks this volcano ceased, but at that moment an extinct volcano, nearly a hundred miles away, near Myvatu, sent its burning mass upon the peaceful inhabitants around. This eruption lasted for several weeks. Early in March there seemed to be a general upheaval of the earth in the whole central portion of the island; new mounds as it were, arose to the surface, some to a hight of several hundred feet and over a thousand feet in diameter at the base, amid tremendous shocks of thundering beneath. They split open at the top and vomit forth their burning contents upon the surface around them, covering a distance of two hundred miles. The world renowned Geysers have dried up since the terrible eruption began, and instead of water these mysterious funnels emit immense quantities of hot smoke and ashes, which, during the night, rising several thousand feet into the air, appear like gigantic columns of fire visible for hundreds of miles. It is said that no historic record of any volcanic eruption anywhere in the world compares with this, either in territory over which it extends, the number of newly opened craters, or the time of its duration. The Copenhagen government has issued an appeal for aid to the sufferers.