Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1891 — LIVES AND SHIPS LOST. [ARTICLE]

LIVES AND SHIPS LOST.

GRAVE FINANCIAL CRISIS IN FRANCE. Tha Last Descendant of Christopher Columbus May Attend the World’s Fair— Suffering- and Death Among Stock is England—No Sites Provided. At London information is received of terrible damage done to shipping by the recent storm. Wrecks are reported all along the coa<t and news has just been received that the steamer ’Brinidad was lost during the storm and all her crew and passengers drowned. So far eighty persons are reported drowned. The British ship Dryad, Captaig. .Thomas, bound from Shields to Valparaiso, has has also been wrecked off Stast Point. Her crew, consisting of twenty-four men and officers, have been dro.wried. The Dryad was an iron vessel of 1,035 tons burden. She was built at Liverpool, and was owned by J. B. Walmsley, of that city. A foreign steamship, the name of which is unknown, was wrecked off Start Point, near Dartmouth, Devonshire, England, during the recent blizzard. All the crew and passengers were drowed. Among the schooners lost off Start Point wasthe Lunesdale. Four of her crew were drowned. Her captain was saved. The schooner Lizzie Ellen was also lost, and two of her crew were drowned. Cornwall continues isolated from the rest of England. Many wrecks are reported to have occurred on that coast, and at Land’s End a number x>f people have been frozen to death. Laborers numbering hundreds have been sent to clear the railroad lines in Devonshire and Cornwall, where the snowdrifts have piled up so heavily that cuttings twelve feet deep have to be made. The mss to farm stock is enormous, and will entail much suffering among, tho farmers, who have already lost considerable money by the terrible weather experienced at the end of last year.

BANK OF FRANCE IN THE BREACH. A Great Financial House of Paris Badly Embarrassed Is Tided Over. Another great European financial house has been caught by the fall In Argentine securities, and the effect was felt in London in an uneasy feeling on the stock exchange. The Societe des Depots et Comptes Courants, of Paris,* a leading monetary institution of France, was forced by its embarrassments to appeal for aid to the government. The society now has only 84,000,000 on hand to meet obligations amounting to $17,000,000. Mq Rouvier, Minister of Finance, was appealed to, and to him it was stated that the sum of $13,000,000 was needed to carry the concern through the crisis. M. Rouvier called a meeting of leading financiers to devise means for relief. It was finally arranged that the Bank of France should advance $15,00.0,000 to the society, which -sum is guaranteed by the bills of the society, and the latter calls for SIOO per sharo from its stockholders, and the financial houses jointly guarantee the sum of $4,000,000 to the Bank of France. The assets of the society will be assigned for the payment of advances. The report of the society’s embarrassment caused a heavy run on its funds, but ail demands were met. The shares of the institution have fallen S3O, shares being now quoted at $97. One hundred and sixty thousand shares are owned by 3,800 people. The situation, as stated by friends and directors, is as follows: Sight and seven-day deposits and current accounts, $15,090,000. The society had on Jan. 31 in its treasuryos2s,ooo,900 in paper or in current accounts. There was also a sum of $25,000,000 of unissued stock which was available at call, for only $20,000,000 had been paid up, and it was only a question of the value of the bills and the chances of immediately realizing upon them that the Bank of France made the guarantee it has given to the five houses aiding tho society. Last Descendant of Columbus. There is a project on foot to have the great Columbian Exposition opened by the only living descendant of Columbus. A sad but interesting reminiscence of the late Dr. Thomas Weston, qf the Department of Publicity and Promotion, is the following letter on the subject which he addressed a few weeks before his death to Major Handy: Dear Sir: The last living member of the Columbus family is the Duke of Seragua, of Madrid. He was recently reported to be dying, but I think he has recovered. He is a literary man and an artist of some repute, Of the twenty-nine autograph letters and books annotated in the hand-writing of Columbus, he possesses sixteen or eighteen. In early life lie was obliged to appeal for help to keep b, dy and soul together, and pensions were granted him by Cuba and Costa Rica, which he now enjoys. He has held i portfolio in the Spanish Cabinet, and is a Vice President of the “Americanistes,” of which Dom Pedro, ex-Emperor of Brazil, is honorary President. His collection of autograph letters, Columbiana pictures, and lithographed portraits—many of the latter his own work —is unsurpassed outside the walls of the Louja. in Seville, where are, as yet unexamined, the manuscripts of the Spanish Government, the accumulations of centuries. I am of the opinion that, if overtures were made to the Duke of Seragua, he would loan his collection, and, perhaps, attend himself. Believing that this comes under the head of promotion, might I suggest that, should other arrangements not have been made, the “last of his race” should touch the lever that sets the machinery of the World’s Columbian Exposition in motion. Respectfully submitted, Thomas Weston.

Money lor Prisons, but No 81tes. A piece of imperfect legislation enacted by the late Congress in its closing hours has come to light The discovery was made that the act approved March 3, providing for the erection of three United States prisons and the confinement therein of United States convicts, is rendered absolutely inoperative*for the purposes intended through a blunder in drawing the bill. Its intention was to authorize the Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior to purchaso three sites and cause tp be erected oh them suitable prisons for the incarceration of United States prisoners convicted of crimes by any courts under the jurisdiction of the department of justice. Not a cent, however, is appropriated for the purchase of sites, and the entire law is therefore useless.

Baron Hirgch’s Bit Donation. At New York, Banker Jesse Seligman drew by cable on Baron Hirsch, of Paris, for the 12,000,000 francs, or 82,500,000, which comprises the fund the income of which is to be used to-assist poor Hebrew immigrants in America. The draft was immediately honored, and Mr. Seligman deposited the funds with several trust companies. The trustees of the fund are to have a meeting and decide how it is to be invested. They will put it ia gilt-edged securities only.