Foreign News

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 42.

—The insurgent Greeks and Turks fought all day on the 3d inst., near Greavena, Macedonia, both sides sustaining heavy losses.

—An expedition to Spitzbergen reports having discovered a mountain nearly 5,000 feet high, which is apparently almost wholly composed of marble.

—A special from Bombay announces that a bucket of tar was poured over the statue of Queen Victoria there during the night, and a pair of old sandals tied around the neck.

—The Philippine Islands insurgents are said to have given the Spanish troops a severe defeat, and more reinforcements are to be forwarded from Spain. The captain-general himself sends home the news of the defeat.

—The French Government has declined the request of Great Britain for the surrender of Tynan, the Irish-American alleged dynamite plotter, arrested at Boulogne some weeks ago, and the prisoner has been released.

—The minister of agriculture of India says that distress is expected in various parts of the country as a result of drought, and a consequent rise in the price of wheat. This is one of the causes of the rise in the price of wheat in America.

—A special despatch from Kingston, Jamaica, says: "Serious riots are reported from Georgetown, the capital of British Guiana. The police, in trying to restore order, were obliged to fire on the mob. Three rioters were killed and many were wounded."

—United States Minister Terrell has lodged with the Turkish Government a claim for $40,000 indemnity on behalf of Mrs. Lenz, mother of Frank Lenz, the Pittsburg bicyclist who was murdered by Kurds while traveling through Asiatic Turkey in 1895.

—The coming winter in Cornwall, it is feared, will be a time of severe trial, the depression in the mining districts having reached an acute stage. The price of tin is lower than it has been in twenty years, and in consequence miners are leaving Cornwall in thousands.

—It is estimated that about fifty women and children will profit by the concession made by the Turkish Government, at the request of Minister Terrell, permitting the departure for the United States, with safe conduct to the seaports, of all native Armenian women and children whose husbands and fathers are in the United States.

—It has been the shame of the United States that railroad disasters have been proportionally far more frequent than in any other country. But a London paper says that "railway accidents have been unusually frequent in England this summer." It would seem that British railroad corporations are becoming reckless as well as those of America.

—A press correspondent at Cadiz, Spain, accredits the following expression to a Spanish army official: "If Spain has not put down the insurrection in Cuba by the first of next March, it is the intention of the government to give up the struggle and let the island go." In the meantime, filibustering expeditions continue to make successful landings of material aid for the insurgents.

—The enormity of the failure of the Panama canal scheme may be partially realized by the contemplating the fact that over a million tons of machinery—engines, dredgers, locomotives, etc.—are rusting and rotting along the line. Yet this is but as dust in the balances compared with the final collapse of all earthly enterprises, when the earth shall be melted and "the works that are therein shall be burned up."

—A Buluwayo despatch of the 13th inst., gives the following important information: Cecil Rhodes, Earl Grey, administrator for the British South African Company, and the other chief officials have held a final indaba with the Matabele chiefs. Mr. Rhodes announced to them that, after yielding up their arms and those of their number who had been guilty of murdering whites, the Matabeles must locate themselves in specified districts of the country. The principal chiefs would be held responsible and would receive monthly salaries from the British Chartered South African Company. The chiefs all agreed to this proposition, and it is believed that the whole Matabele trouble is now at an end.