Secular News | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 4, 1879

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 5, No. 46.

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Secular News.

—California is having an abundance of rain.

—Copper mines in Hancock county, Maine, are paying well.

—Gen. J. C. Davis of the U. S. army, died Nov. 30, in Chicago.

—The Erie R. R. depot at Hornellsville, N. Y., was burned Nov. 29.

—Several districts of India are being severely scourged by malarious fever.

—A mill and 30,000 bushels of wheat were burned at St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 25.

—The floors of a building in Naples, Italy, fell upon a dancing party, killing twenty.

—Cattle are dying of starvation in Humbolt Co., Cal.; cause—drought and grasshoppers.

—A movement is on foot to place Gen. Grant again at the head of the United States army.

—Dispatches from Cape Town, South Africa, report the attitude of the Boers as very threatening.

—A snow storm in the Canton of Ticino, Switzerland, has interrupted traffic and destroyed thousands of vines.

—The Ute Commission are becoming fearful that they can accomplish nothing. Ouray says the hostiles are arming.

—The Pacific Mail pier at Aspinwall has been carried away by a storm. Several colliers lying in the dock were sunk.

—The winter has set in on the North Pacific early and severe. Loss of whalers is reported. No late news from the Jeannette.

—The signal office reports that the sky at sunset on Monday, Nov. 24, was without a cloud from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

—Half the town of Owensberg, Green Co., Ind., was burned, Nov. 26. The greater part of the mercantile establishments was destroyed.

—The Grand Opera House in Toronto, one of the finest on the continent, was burned Nov. 29. The janitor and his wife and daughter were burned. Money loss, $200,000.

—Two hundred and thirty-six fishermen have been lost from Gloucester, Mass., during the past twelve months, and it is feared that others will be added to the list, as several vessels are now missing.

—A disastrous fire occurred in New York, Nov. 25. The stables of the Eighth Avenue Horse Car Railroad, in a four story brick building, were burned, and over 100 horses were lost, with an immense quantity of hay.

—At an inquest reported in the London Telegraph, of Oct. 30, a boy aged fourteen testified: "I cannot read or write. I have never been to school or chapel. I never knew it was wrong to tell a lie. I never heard of 'God."

—Dr. Collyer, Chemist of the Agricultural Department, says that since the method of chrystalization is understood, one-tenth of the land of Illinois suitable to sorghum culture would supply the United States with sugar.

—Secretary Schurz makes an appeal in behalf of the groves of "big trees" in California, and recommends that the President be authorized to withdraw from sale, or from any other disposition, certain townships on the Nevada range.

—Some idea may be obtained of the amount of freight moving this fall from the fact that a break down of a freight train on the Pennsylvania road recently brought twenty freight trains to a stop, and made a blockade ten miles long.

—The village of Randalia, Fayette county, Iowa, containing a population of 200 or 300, was almost entirely destroyed by fire Nov. 25. There is scarcely any insurance. It is believed that the fire originated in the spite of a saloon-keeper, who set fire to a rival's premises.

—A recent telegram announces that 7500 tons of rails—mostly steel—have been bought in England and Wales to be laid down next spring and summer on the southern bank of the Columbia river, from Ainsworth, a new town just above the mouth of the Snake, to the head of the upper fall of the Columbia.

—A company has been organized in San Francisco to engage in coffee raising, in Colima, Mexico. A plantation of 6000 acres is purchased, on which are nearly 50,000 trees planted, and about a million in the nursery. It is 60 miles from the port of Manzanillo, on the Pacific, and is described as a locality well suited to coffee culture.

—Several special correspondents of the London papers call attention to the serious financial distress at Constantinople. The Telegraph's Vienna correspondent says the purveyors of the Sultan's palace have suspended the daily supplies, owing to the non-payment of long-standing bills, but that Osman Pasha is still able to draw his enormous salary.

—Excitement in Ireland increases. A government engineer has surveyed the districts bordering on the Shannon river, with a view to the commencement by the Government of a scheme for their drainage, which is to cost £20,000. The prospect of employment for laborers is regarded with satisfaction. The worst feeling exists in Mayo and Sligo.

—The Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad Company has let a contract for the excavation of a tunnel through the main range of the Rocky Mountains, at Alpine Pass, one-third of a mile long, and 11,000 feet above the sea level. The entire work on the road to the anthracite coal-fields in Elk Mountains and the waters of Gunison is to be completed by the first of September next.