SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 24, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 40.

Read the full edition

SECULAR NEWS.

—Over 132,000 persons are employed on the East India railroads.

—London possesses nine cemeteries, with a total area of 2,225 acres.

—Nearly 800 Chinamen left San Francisco for home by the City of Peking last week.

—There were 100 miles of tunnel in Great Britain in 1877, which costs about $50,000,000.

—It is said that the Rothschilds have agreed to loan Egypt $30,000,000 to clear off the floating debt.

—The yearly revenue of Denmark is about $12,920,000, and its expenditure $11,445,000. Its public debt in 1877 was $51,970,000.

—A disastrous railway collision occurred October 20, at Pontypridd, Eng. Twelve persons are reported killed and forty seriously wounded.

—In various cities of Germany boys under sixteen years of age are prohibited, under penalty of fine and imprisonment from smoking in public places.

—It is proposed to present a bill to the next Congress appropriating $200,000 from the sum now held by the War Department on account of the freedman's branch of the Adjutant General's office, for the building of school-houses for the colored children of the District of Columbia, and for establishing free schools for the higher instruction of the race.

—The New York Evening Post's correspondent at Rio Janeiro tells of a district in Brazil equal in extent to New England, middle Atlantic States, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana combined, that has been without rain since July, 1876. Brooks, springs and wells have long since dried up. Even river beds have now become dusty channels. The cattle, of which there were vast herds, have died of thirst. The people perishing for want of food and water, have fled from their homes, many of them dying, sometimes whole families together, before reaching a place of refuge. Those of them who escaped have overcrowded the cities of refuge so greatly as, in some cases, to multiply the population by five, and they are now herded together in the open streets, living like swine upon the scanty rations issued by the government, and upon such refuse as they can gather in the gutters. Well nigh naked, and utterly debased by their sufferings, they live in beastly immorality, not scrupling, even, to resort to cannibalism in some instances, while small-pox, yellow fever, dysentery and other diseases are sweeping them away by thousands.