SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 50.

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SECULAR.

—The Japanese cotton crop is a complete failure this year.

—According to Bradstreet's reports, nearly all the bonds of the United States are held at home.

—Leading educational men, to the number of nine, have incorporated the California Educational Society.

—The czar proposes now to be crowned king of Poland, and the event will come off in the fall of next year.

—A Yokohama publisher has brought out an edition of Darwin's "Origin of the Species" in the Japanese language.

—Natural gas has been struck at a shallow depth, at Salinas City, Cal., and a company has been incorporated to utilize the product.

—A Zanzibar dispatch says: "The chief of the Bushiri has been captured and handed over to the Germans, who intend to hang him."

—It is said that Queen Victoria contemplates a visit of state to Ireland, which is understood to be a matter of policy rather than desire.

—There were 158 desertions from the regular army during the month of November. Of this number 13 were from the Presidio, San Francisco.

—The first Japanese ever convicted of murder in the State of New York has been sentenced to death by electricity, to be executed in February next.

—A China steamer recently landed at San Francisco a cargo of silk valued at $1,500,000. It was consigned to New York, and made eleven car loads.

—A bill for the formation of Oklahoma Territory was introduced in Congress on the 16th inst.; also a petition for the admission of the State of Wyoming.

—Two men near Butte, Mont., on the 15th inst., had a regular prize-rule fight, just to settle a dispute, which resulted in the death of one of the contestants.

—It has been decided to take the Pan-American delegates on a tour of the Southern States, and then to the Pacific Coast, the journey to begin about February 1.

—England has ordered her naval stores removed from Lisbon in view of possible "strained relations" between her majesty's government and Portugal in regard to their African claims.

—About fifty Sioux Indians have recently been visiting Washington, and called upon the President. They want their reservation lines surveyed, and better schools than are now provided.

—A careful estimate of the expense of running 300 street-cars by horse-power and by electric motor, says the New York Sun, shows a balance in favor of the motor power of over four dollars per day per car.

—Placer County's exhibit of citrus fruits in San Francisco during the present month has been highly creditable, and goes a long way toward demonstrating the productive capacity of Northern California.

—The trial of the Dr. Cronin murderers at Chicago has ended. Coughlin, Burke, and O'Sullivan were sentenced to imprisonment for life, Kunze to three years' imprisonment, and Beggs was adjudged not guilty.

—Austria's standing army costs $47,000,000, Germany's $86,000,000, Great Britain's $97,000,000, Italy's $51,000,000, Russia's $102,000,000 annually. The United States pays in military pensions, $100,000,000 a year.

—The State Board of Health complains in its last monthly report of the difficulty of isolating and checking contagious diseases through the unwillingness of citizens, nurses, and even physicians, to report cases that come to their knowledge.

—The unusually open winter in the East is said to have a bad effect on the public health. A Pittsburg dispatch says typhoid fever is on the increase in the Ohio valley, and a scourge of pulmonary diseases is sweeping Blair County, Pennsylvania.

—Dom Pedro's presence in Europe is creating uneasiness among the crowned. As a deposed emperor, he is a constant reminder of the case with which the empire of Brazil was transformed into a republic, and Republicans take courage.

—Owing to a break in the Sacramento River levee, just below Sacramento, and the formation of a sandbar in the old channel, it is feared that navigation will be permanently impaired, and that a new channel will carry the waters off through the Yolo and Solano tules.

—The inclement weather of the 19th ult. having prevented the Japanese emperor's chrysanthemum party from being held on that day, his majesty ordered that the dinner prepared for the occasion should be given to the inmates of the Tokio asylum for the poor.

—Stanley, the African explorer, gives great credit to the Zanzibar natives who accompanied the late expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha. He says they collected fungi for provisions, and thus kept the Europeans alive. They would eat nothing themselves until all the others had eaten.

—Influenza of a virulent type, which has recently been quite prevalent in Europe, has made its appearance in New York. Eight cases were reported within two days, being friends of a family just returned from Europe. In these cases the disease began with vertigo, followed by headache and chills.

—The provisional president of Brazil is said to be dying, and the matter of a successor may cause trouble. It is possible that the change of government there will not run so smoothly as at first anticipated. A republic is not so easily managed by inexperienced hands as might be supposed.

—British Columbia is greatly alarmed for the fate of its Chinese Restriction act. The Dominion Government has apparently resolved on the repeal of the act at the behest of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and the citizens of the province understand that they must work for the act if they wish to preserve it.

—By a proclamation of general naturalization in Brazil, all foreigners are declared citizens from the date of the proclamation of the republic unless they refuse it. All foreigners will be considered Brazilian citizens after two years' residence if they accept, and may enjoy all the civil and political rights, but shall not be eligible for the office of chief of the State.

—Emperor William, of Germany, is fond of experimenting with the army, having sudden night calls made to test the alertness of the troops, and other like projects. At Bornstedt, recently, a regiment of cavalry was ordered to advance at full gallop, and the sudden helter-skelter through the streets resulted in killing some of the horses and injuring several unsuspecting people.

—King Humbert, of Italy, has inhaled so many cigarettes that his bronchial tubes have become affected. He now sucks camphor instead of tobacco smoke.

—The Brazilian provisional government has canceled its grant to the ex-emperor of 5,000,000 millreas, and has also suspended his allowance on the civil list. He is now declared banished from the country, together with all the royal family. The governor of Rio Grande do Sul is charged with instigating secession in his State, and has been condemned to transportation.

—The Alaska Commercial Company's twenty years' lease of the seal islands expires next year, and Secretary Windom has decided to award the lease for another term to the highest bidder. The seals are more numerous now than they were at the beginning of the term, and but for the raids of the Victoria and San Francisco poachers they would be so abundant that the annual draft of the lessees upon their numbers could not be missed. The present lease returns to the government $315,000 a year.