SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 16.

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SECULAR.

—Afghanistan has a mean elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea.

—Considerable snow fell in portions of New York State on the 14th inst.

—The International Temperance Congress will be held next year in Norway.

—More than 167 African students matriculated in Berlin University this winter.

—Twenty-six hundred emigrants left Queenstown during the first week in April.

—A prairie fire in Dakota destroyed considerable farm property on the 13th inst.

—General Boulanger has been elected a member of the French Chamber of Deputies.

—Nova Scotia has 10,000,000 acres of land, about one-half of which is fit for tillage.

—The Wood Reaper Works at Youngstown, Ohio, were burned April 12. Loss, $250,000.

—The Oregon and California passenger depot in Salem, Oregon, was burned on the 14th.

—Forty persons were killed and about 500 injured by a tornado at Daca, India, on the 7th inst.

—The falling of a roof in New York on the 12th inst., killed one man and injured three others.

—General Boulanger seems to be the idol of the hour in France. The peasants hail him as liberator.

—April 14, the Big Sioux River in Dakota overflowed its banks and did considerable damage to property.

—Bricklayers and masons are on a strike in Mayence, Germany, and in consequence there has been some rioting.

—The fishing schooner James A. Garfield lost four of her crew off the banks of Newfoundland, a few days since.

—High water in the Mississippi River, at St. Paul, Minn., drove a number of families from their homes on the 12th inst.

—On the Khassaya Hills, India, the annual rainfall is 600 inches. Thirty inches have been known to fall on each of five succeeding days.

—The Belgium Government's extraordinary expenditure of 1888 is estimated at $10,000,000, mainly for new forts, military roads and artillery.

—March reports to the Department of Agriculture indicate that the crop of wheat and other winter grains this year will be below the average.

—It is stated that Alvin S. Clark, the great telescope maker, is considering the manufacture of a larger glass than that in the Lick telescope.

—Thirty years ago cultivated cranberries were unknown in the United States; last year the crop from cultivated plants amounted to 600,000 bushels.

—On the 10th inst. an explosion occurred in a dynamite factory at Grenoble, France, by which nine persons were killed and others seriously injured.

—At New York on the 8th inst., 1,500 members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen passed resolutions indorsing the Burlington strike.

—A powder explosion on the 12th inst., in Russia, on the line of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railroad, killed seven men and seriously injured several others.

—The New York Assembly has adopted a resolution providing for the submission to the people of a prohibition amendment. The Republicans voted for and the Democrats against it.

—It is claimed that Dakota has more schools than California, though the population of the latter is much the larger. California, however, is by no means deficient in educational facilities.

—It is stated from New York that the visible supply of grain for April is: Wheat, 33,583,420 bushels; corn, 8,803,951 bushels; oats, 3,777,491 bushels; rye, 327,276 bushels; barley, 1,556,142 bushels.

—On the 11th inst. Judge Brewer, of the United States Circuit Court, signed the final order directing the United States marshal to close the brewery of Seibold & Nagelin, Atchison, Kan., as a nuisance.

—Very high water is reported in the Eau Claire and Chippeway Rivers, Wisconsin, and considerable damage has been done to mills, bridges, and railroads. A great deal of lumber has been swept away.

—A Catholic priest at Livermore, Cal., has been sued for $5,000 damages for brutally beating with his cane a young man of nineteen years, for attending a base-ball match on Sunday instead of going to church.

—April 10 the water in the Vermillion River, Minn., rose higher than ever before known, and several bridges were swept away. Villages were inundated and at some points there was considerable distress.

—Thirteen persons were poisoned, two of them fatally, a few days since in Union County, Ga., by arsenic supposed to have been mixed with some corn meal by a discharged employe at the mill where the meal was ground.

—A few days since a deputy United States marshal and three Indian police attempted the capture of a gang of horse thieves in Indian Territory, when a conflict took place in which two of the officers and two of the thieves were killed. The deputy was seriously wounded.

—A trichina-infected ham eaten on Easter Sunday by a family of seven persons at Ridgeville, Ind., caused the serious illness of the entire family, and the death of the mother. Three daughters are not expected to live, and the other members of the family are in a dangerous condition.

—A number of Hungarian miners at Wilkesbarre, Pa., have been arrested for conspiracy to murder several persons who were witnesses against them two weeks since in a riot case. One man was assaulted and probably fatally injured. The methods adopted by these would-be assassins are similar to those of the Molly Maguires of twelve years ago.

—The Pope has written a letter to President Cleveland thanking him for his jubilee present of a copy of the Constitution of the United States. His "holiness" wishes peace and prosperity, and prays for the American people and the country, the perpetuation of their institutions of liberty, and the plentitude of God's favor. If any are inclined to doubt the sincerity of the "successor of St. Peter" let them study the history of the Papacy in every country where that iniquitous system has ever held sway, and these doubts will be—confirmed.

—One of the walls of the former Convent of San Fernando, in the city of Mexico, which was in progress of demolition, fell in on the 13th inst., burying many workmen in the ruins. Three dead bodies have been recovered. Fifteen or twenty persons were wounded more or less seriously.

—From the edition of Geo. P. Rowell & Co.'s "American Newspaper Directory," published April 2 (its twentieth year), it appears that the newspapers and periodicals of all kinds issued in the United States and Canada, now number 16,310, showing a gain of 890 during the last 12 months and of 7,136 in 10 years.