p. 11 | Items of News

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 5, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 1.

Read the full edition

Items of News.

—An English M. P. advises English farmers to emigrate to the United States.

—The village of Durand, Wis., was almost totally destroyed by fire December 27.

—An English syndicate has invested in fifty thousand acres of coal land in Ohio.

—About $15,000,000 worth of musical instruments are made and sold in this country every year.

—The cashier of a bank in Florence, Italy, recently absconded with over $400,000 of bank funds.

—December 25, a bonded warehouse on South Street New York was destroyed by fire. Loss $2,000,000.

—The day-schools of New Zealand have an enrollment of 1,623 pupils, and an average attendance of 1,277.

—The office of the Imperial Receiver at Sebastapol, was recently entered by means of a tunnel, and 47,000 rubles were stolen.

—The steamer Braunschwíg of the North German Lloyds line has sunk at Bremen. The water entered the ports while she was coaling.

—Severe storms on the Atlantic still continue, and much damage has been done to shipping. The loss of life has also been considerable.

—A London firm has recently purchased 1,300,000 acres of land in Mississippi. It is their intention to improve and colonize these lands.

—Small-pox has broken out among the students of the medical college at Keokuk, Iowa. There are about forty cases. One student has died.

—That excellent paper formerly known as the Examiner and Chronicle has dropped the last half of its name, and is simply The Examiner.

—Reports from Warsaw show that the damage done to property during the recent riot there is enormous. A portion of the city was virtually destroyed.

—On the 27th ult. a quantity of kerosene on the steamer plying between Baltimore and West Point, Va., exploded, killing nineteen persons and destroying the steamer.

—During the year just closed, the courts of San Francisco have granted 364 divorces—one for each day in the year. This is an increase of thirty-one over the preceding year.

—Another plot to assassinate the Czar has been discovered. The plot was perfectly arranged, and failed only because the Czar did not pass along the street when he was expected to.

—It is stated that 14,000 tickets have already been taken for transportation by vessels leaving Bremen for America in the spring, and that an equal number of emigrants will go from Hamburg.

—Mr. Jacob Lorillard, of New York, proposes to establish an American passenger steamship line to England which shall make the trip in six days. All the capital for the enterprise has been subscribed.

—A Paris tradesman has an ingenious advertising device. He daily sends up a number of tiny balloons with his name and address attached. One recently sent up was found at a distance of 290 miles from Paris.

—Three Russian officers who were charged with not having taken proper precautions for the murdered Czar's safety, have been considerably let off with three years exile, and the loss of title and civil rights. Justice means more in Russia than in America.

—New Jersey has furnished more than her quota of defaulters. The Auditor of Accounts of Newark has been imprisoned on his own confession that he has embezzled $125,000 of the city funds within the past three years, and lost it in Wall Street speculations.

—The question of abandoning the old German alphabet is quite extensively advocated in Germany. Scholars and historians are using the Latin type, and it will probably soon be used altogether. The extraordinary prevalence of short sight in Germany is largely ascribed to the old type.

—A correspondent reviewing the events of 1881 in Ireland, says: The year closed in confusion, contention, and a war of races and classes. Commercial credit is broken. The spirit of the country is sunk in deep depression. The result of the year's trade shows a decrease of 30 per cent in imports.

—During a festival at Shanesville, Tuscarawas Co., Ohio, Dec. 31, the floor gave way, precipitating the whole company, about 200, to the floor below. The building immediately took fire and a panic ensued. Many were crushed. The number of killed and wounded is thought to be not less than 100.

—In a case where a man was injured by a railroad train, while walking on a trestle bridge, the Supreme Court of California has decided that persons using the railroad track for travel, except at crossings, are trespassers, and that the company is not liable for accidents happening to them in such instances.

—While the steamer Catalonia was on her way out of Queenstown harbor Dec. 25, she ran into the bark Helen Lee, Captain Barry, bound from San Francisco to Queenstown. The bark sank and nine of her crew were drowned the remaining sixteen being saved by the Catalonia. The latter had her bows stove in.

—During the celebration of a high mass in a church in London on Christmas day, a man was seized while picking pockets. In order to escape, he raised the cry of "fire." In the panic which ensued twenty-five persons were killed; and others injured. The man was a Jew, and four shops kept by Jews were destroyed by the enraged mob.

—The destitution caused by the Michigan fire has been alleviated but not entirely overcome. The provision on hand will last only through January. Sickness is on the increase, owing to poor shelter. Fifteen hundred families will be utterly destitute by the 1st of February, and it will require $200,000 more to provide for their absolute necessaries.

—A body of masked men recently broke into all the drinking saloons in Cedarville, Green County, O., in the night, and destroyed all the liquor on hand. Some buildings were nearly torn down. It was an unwarrantable act, and yet those same saloons have doubtless destroyed dozens of houses and homes in the prosecution of their legitimate (?) business.

—The Pope gave the customary Christmas reception to the Cardinals, and, as usual nowadays, got off his whine in regard to persecution. He said that his position was becoming more and more intolerable in Rome, and he expected far more severe persecution in the future. He considers it an extreme grievance that he is not allowed to claim temporal power in order to secure spiritual independence. Since he calls his present condition "persecution," what would he call the condition of the poor Christians at the time when he had his coveted temporal power?

—The steamer Jeanette which started on an Arctic exploring expedition two years ago, and in search of which the Rodgers was sent out last summer, has been heard from. She was crushed in the ice in September last about 500 miles north of the mouth of the Lena River. The party put to sea in three boats. Two of the companies arrived at a station in Siberia, after spending three months in open boats, and suffering the severest hardships on account of cold and hunger. The remaining boat has not been heard from. This expedition was fitted out with the utmost care, and the result, together with former experiences, should be sufficient to convince any one that hunting for the North Pole is a foolish expenditure of life and property. Even if it could be found, it has been sufficiently demonstrated that navigation in the Polar seas is impracticable.

—The Tribune says: The discovery of a deserted city cut out of the rocky face of a winding cliff, has rewarded the efforts of the Stevenson-Smithsonian Institute exploring party during its researches in New Mexico and Arizona in the past season. This is by far the most important find yet made among the ancient haunts of the cliff dwellers. Some of the houses contain four or five dwellings, one on top of the other, and on the plateau above the cliff were found many ruins of temples of worship, built of well-cut, square stones. A comparison of the collections of pottery and implements gathered in the cliff houses by the exploring party, with those obtained in the Pueblo villages, strengthens the theory that the Pueblo Indians are the degenerate descendants of the once powerful race that built the ruined cities of the plains, and then retreating before some more warlike race, carved out these singular dwellings on the sheer walls of dizzy precipices, and found in them, it may be for centuries, both fortresses and homes.