p. 110 | Notes of News

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 12, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 7

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Notes of News.

—Spain wants a new loan of $60,000,000.

—Disastrous floods in New Grenada are reported.

—Alabama makes over 80,000 tons of iron annually.

—Jules Favre, the eminent French statesman, is dead.

—The yellow fever has broken out at several places in Brazil.

—St. Louis is now building an art museum to cost about $200,000.

—It is rumored that San Salvador has suffered great damage from a recent earthquake.

—It is estimated that in this country about 80 tons of writing paper are used daily.

—England and Portugal have combined to suppress the slave trade in the Mozambique Channel.

—Tuesday night, Feb. 3, a cabin was burned near Columbia, S. C., and 9 colored people perished in the flames.

—The New Testament, as revised by the Bible Revision Committee, will probably be published during the present year.

—The Tay-bridge disaster in Scotland occurred on Sunday, and the Caledonian line has in consequence forbidden Sunday-travel.

—A statement is made, based on careful estimates, that about 3,000,000 of persons in the world die annually of consumption.

—The communicants of the churches of the American Mission Board in the Turkish empire were last year increased by more than 1000.

—Of 25,394 families recently visited by the Vermont Bible Society, 2,328 were without the Scriptures, and 524 of these were American families.

—A dispatch from Paris dated Feb. 4, gives an account of a collision between two railroad trains near that city; 22 persons were reported killed, and 116 wounded.

—According to a statement made by the Inspector General of Police in India, no less than 26 per cent of the female children born in that country last year were killed.

—The French missionaries in Mosul give painful accounts of the ravages of the famine in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, where Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans all suffer.

—Recent terrible hurricanes in the Philippine Islands, causing great damage to property and shipping, and wrecking a Spanish gun-boat, with loss of all on board, are reported.

—Ferdinand de Lesseps has reached Panama, and set on foot the surveys for the proposed canal. He is confident that in France alone he could raise twice the amount of money needed for the project.

—The exhibition on Sunday of works of modern artists, at the Royal Institution, Manchester, Eng., has been closed. The visitors were mostly of the working class, and their behavior was most exemplary.

—Fifty thousand shares of Central Pacific Railroad stock have been purchased by a syndicate in New York composed of bankers and capitalists. The stock was sold at 72, with an option for 50,000 additional shares at 80.

—In the debate on the Queen’s speech, Lord Beaconsfield declared that home-rule meant dismemberment of Great Britain. This is, to all practical purposes, the response of the British government to the Irish Home-rule party.

—The whole number of laborers connected at present with the American Board (Congregational) in foreign fields, is 394. This includes ministers, physicians, and assistants sent from this country. There are besides 1,175 native pastors, teachers, and helpers.

—A Chinese wash-house in San Francisco was burned Feb. 5. It is not known how many Chinamen were in it at the time; but 11 charred bodies have been recovered from the ruins. It is supposed they were stupified with opium, and the fire caught from their pipes.

—Governor Blackburn of Kentucky has recently pardoned out 87 convicts from the State Penitentiary. This extraordinary clemency was owing to the fact that nearly 900 prisoners were crowded within the penitential walls of a prison which was originally intended for only 600.

—Since 1865 Indians in Texas have killed 407 men, women, and children, wounded 70, carried off 86 women and children, stolen 43,392 cattle, 20,521 horses and mules, and 2,430 sheep, besides many other depredations. Since 1874 there have been 150 bands of hostile Indians in that State.

—It is stated that the youth who wrote a threatening letter to the Queen of Sweden has, by the orders of the King, been liberated, and his Majesty, returning good for evil, is going to charge himself with the lad’s further education, as he alleged that it was want of means to continue his studies which led to his crime.

—The British government in India, which has been very careful not to interfere with the religious sensibilities of its native subjects, has at last given notice that it will not

hereafter allow the Doorga Pooja holidays, with their idolatrous festivities, to interrupt official business so many days in the year, as has been the custom.

—The Mexican government has ordered the celebrated Castle of Chapultepec to be refitted for the reception of General Grant and party. The castle is about two miles from the city, overlooking the entire Mexican Valley and the City of Mexico. A house is also being prepared in the city to enable the party to alternate between the town and country.

—The proposed increase of the German army is the all-absorbing topic in Europe. A leading Berlin official says that the plan is directed solely against France, and that that nation must either co-operate with the other powers against Socialism or go to war. Russia intends to follow the example of Germany, and increase her army; and Austria has resolved to strengthen her defenses.

—The English Unitarian Almanac for 1880 reports the number of ministers in active duty as 290. The Inquirer thinks this a very unsatisfactory exhibit, and says: “It suggests to us the gravest reflections, which, unfortunately, we could not make public without the risk of rousing a personal, bitter, and, we fear, very unprofitable controversy.”

—All the prisoners in the Greensburg, Ind., county jail, 16 in number, escaped on the morning of the 23d of January. They made their exit through the same hole in the floor of the upper cells which was made by prisoners some time ago, and which the County Commissioners ordered to be stuffed with a mattress and hidden under a bed, so that the prisoners would not find it. They did find it.

—M. Menier, the celebrated French chocolate manufacturer, has recently experimented successfully on his estate at Noisiel with a plough driven by electricity, the motive power of which was supplied by a wire at the distance of half a mile. The plough did about the same work as if it were drawn by four oxen. Will electricity supersede the use of horses and oxen on the farm?

—Dexter Hawkins, in a tabular statement in the Christian Advocate, of New York, gives the figures to prove that the Roman Catholic Church has obtained from the city of New York, donations of real estate to the amount of $3,500,000, and in eleven years has received from the public treasury $5,827,471.19, being an average annual donation of $529,770.10.

—A Times dispatch from the Afghan town of Candahar states that terrible accounts reach that place from without the British lines. It is said that nearly 2,000 families have been exterminated by the Ghilzais; and that 7 of the villages of the latter were afterward captured by the Hazaras, and every soul in them slain. All is quiet at Cabul, and business in the city has been entirely resumed.

—The Duchess of Marlborough Relief Fund Committee have investigated the alleged cases of death from starvation in Ireland, and find the reports untrue. Still, the famine is increasing; and figures compiled from the official returns of local committees, which are vouched for by Protestant and Catholic clergy, gentry, and public officials, show that 300,000 people are destitute and suffering.

—Furious gales and heavy snow-storms along the Atlantic coast are reported in dispatches of Feb. 3. At Long Branch the storm was the most severe and destructive that ever visited this coast. The wind blew with tremendous fury, blowing away summer-houses, pavilions, etc. In Eastern New York the snow was 10 feet deep in some places, and there was a prospect of a spell of rough weather.

—A late issue of the Scientific American gives an account of an invention which promises to work great changes in telegraphy. It is the substitution of dynamo-electric machines for batteries in developing the electric current. How great the change will be is seen by the statement that by its adoption the Western Union Company will substitute twelve tons of machinery for seventy-two tons of battery, and secure a more constant, manageable, and economical force.

—Mr. Froude, the historian, in the North American Review, discusses the question whether the 6,000,000 of Irish Roman Catholics in the United States constitute an element dangerous to the future welfare of the Republic. His emphatic opinion is that they do; and he believes that if Roman Catholics attempt to obtain political dominion in this country, the issue will be fought out with bullets instead of paper ballots.

—A friend sends us a clipping from the Bill Poster, whose correspondent at Commerce, Mich., gives notice of a “social party to be held at the Commerce Lake House. We quote from the Poster: “Dance bill, 50 cents. Supper at Mrs. Dr. Lowrey’s; bill, one dollar per couple. Good music will be in attendance. Everybody is invited to attend, as this social must suit all, and a good time is expected. The proceeds are to be donated to the pastor of the M. E. church.”