News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 23.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

SECULAR.

—It costs $750 to fire a shot from the dynamite cruiser, Vesuvius.

—A destructive cyclone swept over Lamar County, Texas, on the 4th inst.

—It is estimated that the Leadville smelters will produce $15,000,000 this year.

—The great telescope at Lick Observatory in California enables one to see 100,000 stars.

—The Bank of Omaha, incorporated last fall for $100,000, has failed. Bad loans are the cause.

—Heavy strikes have been recently reported from Bohemia. Several thousand hands are already out of work.

—Since 1871, 2,500,000 emigrants have left Germany, and 2,000,000 of these have settled in the United States.

—It is reported that the American exhibit at the Paris exposition is behind even the second-rate countries of Europe.

—By the sinking of the schooner Thomas Houston, six miles off Milwaukee, the morning of the 1st inst., seventeen lives were lost.

—President Harrison has issued an order abolishing all Sunday duties for soldiers except the parade for personal inspection.

—One life insurance company of New York will have to pay claims amounting to $420,000 on victims of the Pennsylvania disaster.

—Hon. John H. Gray, Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, died at Vancouver, June 5, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

—The contest over the will of the late A. T. Stewart has been settled by a compromise between Judge Hilton and the heirs, and is practically ended.

—It is reported on good authority that General Lloyd S. Brice is to succeed the late Allen Thorndyke Rice as editor of the North American Review.

—On the 6th inst. the aged Marchioness de Chasteler, of Belgium, was shot through the heart while in bed at her home near Brussels, by an unknown assassin.

—According to the Chicago Express the municipal government of Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, is in the hands of women, the mayor and aldermen all being of that sex.

—Political relations are reported as being somewhat strained between Germany, Russia, and Austria. The hostile policy of the Czar is beginning to show itself.

—Fish are dying in large numbers in some of the rivers of California. It is believed that they are poisoned by the sawdust discharged into the streams from the numerous sawmills along their banks.

—It is believed that Tassott, the murderer of Amos Snell, the Chicago millionaire, is in China. Mrs. Snell still professes to be willing to give $50,000 to anyone who will deliver him in this country.

—The wealth of seventy-two of the richest American millionaires exceeds by $33,000,000 the total money circulation of the United States. Their wealth is $1,433,000,000, or an average of $20,000,000 each.

—Acres of rock lying on Holkham Bay, Alaska, formerly supposed to be utterly worthless, have turned out to be rich in silver, assaying as high as 500 ounces to the ton. Great excitement prevails over the discovery.

—A preliminary survey of the boundary line between Alaska and British America is soon to be made, looking forward to the establishment of definite boundary marks between the two sections, which has been rendered necessary by the mining interests lately developed there.

—The police seized thirty million blank Chinese lottery tickets at San Francisco the 4th inst., and this was only a portion of the amount on hand. The aggregate weight of the tickets seized amounted to nine tons. Judging from this, the innocent Ah Sin is not far behind his white brother in the gambling business.

—Venezuela, South America, is suffering from extreme drought, only two showers of rain having fallen in the last fifteen months. In consequence, the yellow fever is creeping into the higher mountainous districts, ten per cent. of the population of some towns being at present suffering from that deadly disease.

—New Yorkers are considering the feasibility of increasing their present water supply by the erection of a colossal dam at Quaker bridge, near Croton Lake. The proposed dam, if built, will be 1,500 feet long, and 274 feet high, with a thickness of 216 feet at the bottom. Perhaps the Johnstown disaster will lead to a more careful consideration of the subject before definite plans are settled upon.

—Seattle, Washington Territory, was almost wiped out of existence by fire June 6. More than sixty acres were burned over in the very heart of the city, and only one business house remains intact. The losses will foot up $15,000,000, and hundreds of people are destitute of the necessities of life. Several persons are thought to have perished in the flames. Assistance is being rendered to the destitute by the surrounding country.

—The excitement still continues in Chicago over the case of Cronin, the murdered doctor. A great conspiracy is thought to exist in certain Irish-American circles, and it seems apparent that Cronin met his death at the hands of some of this clan, but the facts have been so artfully concealed that the proof is hard to get hold of. Rumors were circulated on the 8th inst. to the effect that Cronin was alive, but the fact is generally discredited.

—A Catholic congress recently assembled in Portugal for the consideration, among other things, of the following objects: To discuss the best means to be adopted for combating the Protestantism and the free thought which some are strenuously endeavoring to propagate throughout Portugal; to invite the Portuguese Catholics to adopt a policy of moral force to secure the liberty and the independence of the Holy See; and to offer a universal protest against the outrages and insults to which the sovereign pontiff is daily subjected.

—Recent dispatches from London state that the followers of the Mahdi have made Western Abyssinia almost a desert. Towns have been devastated and herds and flocks destroyed in large numbers. Over 2,000 Christians have been butchered, and hundreds of the best inhabitants have been taken to Mecca as slaves, in spite of the provision of the treaties. The Italian Government has the matter in hand and will execute summary vengeance upon the Abyssinian chiefs and their followers who are responsible for the atrocities.

—Later news from the calamity at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, show that the disaster was slightly overestimated. But thousands of bodies have been buried, while thousands more are still entangled in the acres of débris which cover that portion of Conemaugh Valley. Owing to so many bodies being swept away by the flood, it will never be known exactly how many lost their lives. In scores of cases whole families were drowned, leaving neither kith nor kin to tell the tale. The most conservative estimates of the loss of life at this writing, place it at not over 5,000. Money, provisions, and clothing have been and are still being sent into the flooded district in large quantities, so that present necessities are being supplied. The gravest source of danger, however, is from the contagious diseases that are breaking out, owing to the stench and malaria caused by the rubbish and the hundreds of putrifying bodies covered up in it. There are 10,000 men at work on the mass, but it will take at least four weeks to get over the ground, and it seems probable, at present, that self-preservation on the part of the survivors will soon make it necessary to burn this accumulated matter in order to prevent the further outbreak of disease.