Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

In Texas they are debatipg whether farmers would not better live in villages, as they do in Germany and Switzerland, driving out to their fields roundabout This would relieve the monotony of farm life. An article on the presence of gold in the Appalachian region of Maryland, which was recently printed in a Baltimore paper, recalled to a lawyer of that city the fact that the United States Supreme Court has decided that all deposits of gold and silver in Maryland belong to the State and not to the owner of the land in which they lie.

Thb American railroad contractor is a cosmopolitan. He builds railroads in Mexico, Central America, South America, China, Japan, Siam and in many other lands. His last contract is for a road from Haifa, in Syria, to Damascus. The line is to be completed within eighteen months, and the Intention is to extend it through Persia to India as soon as the necessary concessions are obtained. Some idea of the enormous proportions the business of hotelkeeping has assumed in this country may be gained . from tho fact that there are in the United States upwards of 50,000 hotels, exclusive of wnat may be properly termed inns and taverns and what are oommonly known as apartment houses, although the latter are as hotels, in that they have a common kitohen and dining-room. The Welsh in the United States claim that they are in numbers as many as their countrymen in Wales, and they also claim that one of their ancestors forestalled Columbus in the discovery of America by 272 years. They base their assertion on historical traditions, and the manuscripts of old Welsh bards on the one hand, and on the prevalence of Welsh in many of the languages of the Indians, both of South and North America, on the other.

Very few people know anything about the Indians in Western North Carolina—the Cherokees. There are 1.200 of them and they are increasing in numbers. They own 75,000 acres of land, and very fine land it is. Their chief is Stillwell Sounooke. He eannot speak English at at all. There are some native preachers and four sohools, the Government maintaining the latter. There are other Cherokees but these are not inoluded in the 1,200, as they live elsewhere than on the reservation. The Cherokee Strip opening brought strange experiences of boom heights and collapse depths to the border town of Arkansas City, Kansas. Prior to the opening it was the great centre for the boomers and for their supplies; the evening of the opening day it was almost a deserted village. During the few weeks preceding the opening the postoffice did a volume of business entitling it to rank as a first-class postofflee. Since the opening it has done more business with the Dead Lstter Office than any other city in the Union. More than 15,01>0 letters were returned to Washington within a few days after the opening. It speaks graphically of the wild rusn for tne unknown taken by the boomers that any effort to deliver these thousands of letters to the people who a few hours before were within reach was utterly useless.

British naval authorities are congratulating one another over the rocent showing made by the British cruiser Melpomene in steaming from Callao to Victoria, a distance of over 5,000 miles, in twenty-two days, without making a stop for ooal. It is said this is an achievement which has seldom been paralleled and never surpassed. The Melpomene is a stoel cruiser of 2,950 tons displacement. Her principal features are: Length, 265 feet, beam, 41 feet, and draught, 17 feet 6 inches. She is capable of attaining a speed of 19.75 knots an hour. Her bunkers have a capacity for 400 tons of coal. It is said she can steam 8,000 miles at a speed of 10 knots an hour. In general features the Melpomeno approaches close to the new United States cruisers Cincinnati and Kaleigh. She is less poworful, however, than either. Some idea of the abundanoo of game, big and little, in the wildernesses of the Northwestern mountain ranges may be gathered from the record of a season’s untlng, for business, in the Cascade Mountains about Mount Hood, by W. G. Clark, a noted trapper, who used one time to hunt with Buffalo Bill. He £ itched his camp on the south side of iount Hood just about snowfall last year, and was in exile for six or eight months. Part of the time the snow was twenty feet deep. In little more than a month he killed 120 elk and over 200 deer, sending tho meat down to Portland by a packer. When the snow got too deep for hunting he took to his traps, and when summerjmt in returned to civilization with 12,000 worth of mink, lion, sable, marten, fox and other skins, including several silver-gray fox skins, which are worth SSO each. Altogether he cleared about $3,000 by his season’s hunting. He got no bears, for though there are plenty of them in the mounttains, they are holed up in the winter. There has been a great influx of idle men into San Francisco and other towns on the Pacific coast duriug the past few weeks, and the questiou of what to do for them or with them has become very prominent and serious. Most of them are tramps of the ordinary, disreputable species, but there are also many honest workmen out of employment among the army that has besieged the ooast. These men have been eoming into California, beating their way on freight and passenger trains, sometimes fifty to a hundred in a single company. They have captured freight trains, and the railroad companies have notified the freight conductors to permit them to ride, because the gaDgs are so numerous they can cause serious trouble, and have done so where transportation was refused. The genuine • ‘hoboes” have beoome so bold that they ride on the platforms of the oars of the fast expresses, and the trainmen dare not attempt to dislodge them. The railroad companies have appealed to the authorities in nearly every town to do their duty and arrest the tramps, but the officials have declined to assume the charge of half a hundred healthy loafers, to be kept and fed. The loafers and crooks are making for San Francisoo probably with a view to preying on the visitors to the big midwinter fair. The honest unemployed are more scattered, but’ a week ago San Francisco had 514 of the latter, all white men, quartered at the city’s expense in a relief camp. Startling are the official statistics that have just been published in Germany concerning the number of suicides in various armies of the old world, and they are regarded by the Omaha Bee as a striking illustration of the unpopularity of obligatory military service. It seems that in Austria the average rate for the year is 131 per 100,000 men. The French come next, with ninety-two suicides per annum for each 100,000 men. The German government gives its rate at sixty-eight, but these figures are generally believed to be below the actual Dumber, as the impression prevails in

military circles throughout Europe tht the suicides ia the German are more frequent even than in that of Austria. Italy’s quota is given at forty-five, while that of Russia does not exceed twenty, a figure that is obviously far below the truth. Belgium gives its rate at twentyfour, Spain at fourteen, and England at twenty-three, most of the suicides in the British army occurring out in India. A remarkable fact is that, notwithstanding the majority of suicides are popularly believed to be attributable to tyranny on the part of the officers, yet it is precisely among the officers that the largest number of self-inflicted viotims is to be found. Tho favorite method of suicide is by shooting, either with a rifle or a revolver. Next comes drowning, and after that hanging, while of late a large number of offioers and men have taken their lives by throwing themselves in front of railway trains. It has also been noted that, whereas the smallest number of suicides takes place in the winter, the largest number occurs in the broiling hot months of July and August.