SECULAR NEWS by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 34.

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SECULAR NEWS.

By Editor

—The census of 1876 gives the population of France at 36,905,788.

—At Omaha alone 1,000 west bound families cross the Missouri daily.

—Cincinnati has voted $2,000,000 for the completion of the southern railroad.

—There were two distinct shocks of earthquake recently felt at Berkeley, Cal.

—This has been the hottest summer England has experienced for eleven years.

—England is becoming more and more dependent on the United States for bread.

—There are 10,000 native Irish and 5,630 German voters registered in San Francisco.

—Austria has forbidden the circulation within her territory, of all German socialistic newspapers.

—September 9 was the 28th anniversary of the admission of California into the Union as a State.

—Thirty thousand dollars' worth of books were added to the Princeton College library during the last year.

—An Indian woman in Alaska was recently flayed alive, and a girl tortured for practicing witchcraft in Sitka.

—Three hundred soldiers and firemen were killed by a water-spout at Miskolez, Hungary. They were buried in one grave.

—A flash of lightning at Morley, England, lately did terrible execution by striking a powder magazine, which exploded with terrific effect.

—The assessable property of San Francisco amounts to $244,476,470 this year against $254,867,050 last year, a decrease of over $10,000,000.

—There have been already constructed this year 691 miles of new railroad, against 689 in 1877, 740 in 1876, 426 in 1875, 690 in 1874, and 1,583 in 1873.

—There are more than 2,000 photograph galleries in Paris, employing upwards of 18,000 persons and doing a business of more than 30,000,000 francs a year.

—The steamer Bywell Castle and excursion steamer Princess Alice collided on the Thames on the 3d inst. It is stated that between 600 and 700 lives were lost.

—The table of provincial imports of British Columbia for the year ending June 30, 1878, shows a total value of $2,258,000. The exports during the same period were $3,145,000.

—There were 2,470 failures in the United States during the last three months, with $48,753,000 liabilities, against 3,355, with $82,078,000 liabilities, during the first three months of the year.

—There are over $2,500,000,000 in railroad bonds and stocks which pay the owners nothing. There is $500,000,000 in iron furnaces and manufacturing establishments, and $600,000,000 in shipping, hopelessly tied up.

—About 1,000,000 men are employed on the canals of England and Wales, and on the boats also live 70,000 women, who, with their husbands and children, make up a literally "floating" population of nearly half a million.

—The yellow fever continues to rage in the South and is spreading rapidly. Almost all the cities and large towns on the rivers, or leading railroads, are quarantined. At New Orleans there is an average of more than a hundred new cases daily, many of which are fatal.

—During a recent visit of the sanitary officials to the Chinese quarters in San Francisco, in one boarding house, 60 feet by 40 in dimensions, 410 Chinamen were found sitting at their dinner of rice at once, and in a hospital four lepers were found, one of whom was employed in making cigars for sale about the city.

—The population in China has been reduced over 5,000,000 by actual starvation, and the prospect continues as gloomy as at the beginning. Further, the diseases which follow famine have caused the death of three of the noble band of foreign missionaries engaged in relief work, and also stricken down the Chinese high commissioner, Yuan Pao-heng.

—September 4, a fire at Omaha totally destroyed the Grand Central Hotel. Ten persons were killed and as many more badly injured. Loss, $300,000; insurance, $30,000. The hotel was to have been opened on the 10th instant, thoroughly refitted and furnished. The gas mains were all broken, leaving the city in darkness. The fire is supposed to have originated in the garret from a candle left by a plasterer.

—September 6, a Washington accommodation train on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, coming east, collided with the Kirkwood accommodation going west, near Grand avenue crossing, within the city limits. A large number of passengers were on the Washington train, but no one was seriously hurt on either train. Only five were injured in all. Both locomotives and one baggage car were wrecked, involving a loss of about $10,000.

—During a storm on the afternoon of August 17, a powder magazine on the outskirts of Pottsville, Pa., was struck by lightning, and eleven hundred kegs of powder were exploded, completely wrecking the magazine, and scattering the debris with terrific force in an easterly direction, making a gap in the woods fifty feet wide. A picnicking party was assembled in the woods a short distance below the magazine, and several of the party were more or less injured, some fatally, by flying stones, timber, etc.

—A project is on foot in New Orleans for digging a ship canal between New Orleans and Barataria Bay—an estuary of the sea that penetrates far into the land on the south coast of Louisiana. The distance from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico by this route would be only fifty-eight miles. The cost of digging the canal it is estimated would be only $5,000,000. Neither Government nor State aid is asked, the advocates of the canal solely ask Congress to grant them the right to use the tidal waters of Barataria Bay.