Events and Comments

EVENTS AND COMMENTS. BY EDWARD H. ANDERSON.

The Jamestown Exposition. — The United States is to have another exposition which will open on the 26th of April, 1907, and is to be known as the

Jamestown Exposition. It is to be held on the shores of Hampton Roads, near Norfolk, Va. A recent decision of the board of management, determines that the exposition will not open on Sundays, so that the dissatisfaction at the Lewis and Clark exposition last year, on account of the compromise arrangement in regard to Sunday opening, will not be experienced in this new exposition, where absolute closing of the gates every Sunday will be the rule. This arrangement will afford visitors an opportunity to visit points of historic interest in the vicinity of Norfolk, on Sunday, and attend worship in one or more of the historic church buildings in Norfolk, and neighboring towns. These are very famous old churches dating back to colonial times, the oldest and most famous being St. Paul's Episcopal church, erected in 1739. The bricks in this building were imported from England, long before America had a brick-yard. High up under the eaves at one corner, next to Church street, a cannon ball is imbedded in the wall. The ivy is cut away, around the ball, and below is an inscription reciting the fact that the shot was fired from Lord Dunmore's ships January 1, 1776. Then there is the old St. John's church, said to be the third oldest church in the United States, with its curious monuments of black marble standing in its burial ground; and at Smithfield, nearby, is another church remarkable because many of the combatants of Baker's rebellion are buried there, either in the church itself, or its old graveyard. The church was built in the middle of the 17th century, being a plain buttressed structure, with a square which gives it the appearence of some ancient English church. Then again there are the ruins of the old church at Jamestown Island, the second church to be built in the new world. On the ground where this church was built was formerly a wooden structure, the first in the United States, which was burned down by the Indians a few months after it was erected. It was

then rebuilt of brick imported from England. Little by little the structure has succumbed to the ravages of time, and the tower alone is now left. This old church was the refuge of early colonies when threatened by Indians.

Died. — At Cannonville, Utah, Tuesday, July 3, Emily B. Spencer, well known to many pioneer families of southern Utah, because of her poetical writings; born in Buffalo, N. Y., June 14, 1834, and came with her husband, George Spencer, to Utah in 1852. —In Tay'orsville, Tuesday, 3rd, William Bennion, a brother of

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Bishop Heber Bennion, born April 9, 1863. His death occurred by a falling hay derrick, while he was putting up hay for Mrs. Mary Newbold whose husband is on a mission in England.— in Randolph, Thursday, 5th, Olavus Jacobson, a handcart veteran of 1857, born Norway, November 25, 1845, came to America in 1856, and to Salt Lake City in 1857. He was a member of the bishopric for twenty years. —In Payson, Thursday, 5th, John W. Keele, one of the settlement's oldest residents, born in Green county, Illinois, in 1842, and came to Utah in 1852. — In Menan, Idaho, Saturday, 7th, Martha McCall Montague, born Tennessee, September 6, 1835, a resident of Nauvoo in the early days, and came to Utah in 1868. In Los Angeles, Cal., Saturday, 7th, Axel Einarsen, born Denmark, August 9, 1843, a brother-in-law of Bishop C A. Madsen, of Gunnison, came to Utah in 1862, and was a merchant for many years at Axtel and Redman. —In American Fork, Sunday, 8th, Christian Franson, born Copenhagen, Denmark, January 11, 1819, joined the Church in 1855, and emigrated in 1857, coming with the handcart company, to within 120 miles west of Omaha, where, owing to ill health, he remained, coming to Utah is 1861 by ox team. — In Hooper, Tuesday, 10th, Mary Ann Fowles, wife of Joseph Fowles, born Wales, in 1846. — Garland, In

Thursday, 12th, William A. Ray, one of the best known of the country-town business men of the state of Utah, born Mississippi, 1849, and came to Utah with his parents in 1853. He represented Millard counly in the legislature of 1897-8. — In Salina, Sevier county, Friday, 13th, William McFadyen, who early took part in the siege of Sebastopol, and in the relief of Lucknow, born in Scotland, March 25, 1829, joined the Church in 1845, and came to Utah in 1863, settling in Salina in 1871, where he filled with honor and credit nearly every office in the gift of the people. — In Spanish Fork, Friday, 13th, William T. James, for many years conductor of the choir and instructor of musical studies, born in Wales, June 25, 1848, came to Utah in 1866. — In Ephraim, Wednesday, 18th, Anthon J. Peterson, grandson of former President Canute Peterson, 23 years of age, was accidentally killed by the prongs of a hay derrick. In Salina, Monday, — 23rd, Anna Catherine Jensen, born Denmark, January 19, 1816, embraced the gospel 1853, in Loland,came to America in 1855, and resided in Iowa until August 6, 1859, when she and her husband arrived in Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake — City, July 24th, Heber C. Kimball, grandson of the illustrious pioneer of that name, born July 15, 1879, the son of Albert H. and Hattie Partridge Kimball.— In Springville, Wednesday, 29th, Mary Wood Bagley, was buried. She was born in Decatur county, Ind., March 22, 1833, and came to Utah in 1853; was a pioneer

of Arizona in 1877.— In Ogden, Monday, 30th, Frederick William Geisler, born Germany, October 11, 1829, came to Utah thirty-four years ago, and resided in Ogden City.—In Salt Lake City, 30th, Wilford W. Luce, born Fox Island, November 7, 1837, came to Utah in 1848.

The Salton Sea. — Edmund Mitchell gives a very entertaining account of the formation of the Salton Sea, in the August number of the North American Review. wmg to a diversion of the course of the lower Colorado river, Southern California will add to its geographical features, a lake that covers an area of more than four hundred square miles, being now the largest sheet of water in the

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United States, next to the Great Salt Lake, not counting, of course, Lake Michigan. The Salton Sink is a vast depression, the lowest part of which is two hundred and sixty-three feet below sea level, and lies near the river bed of the lower

Colorado river, which was prevented from running into the sink only by a barrier of sand hills. These sand hills were opened to the river by an irrigation company which sought to take waters through them for a vast district of arid land. The season of 1904-5 proved to be one of abnormal rainfall all over the southwest, and the Colorado river rose so that the intake to this canal, which had not been provided with headgates at all, were flooded, and the waters became unmanageable, the river gradually turning and emptying all its waters into the Salton Sink. Lit-

tle notice was taken of it at first, as long as the rising waters only affected a desert area practically untraversed by man; but soon the Southern Pacific Railroad Company was compelled to move its railway tracks towards the mountains because of the rise of the waters. Then the railway company came to the assistance of the California development Company, in the fall months of 1905; but all their efforts

to change the course of the river were in vain. Since December last, all the

waters of the Colorado have been poured into the Salton Sea which has been rising at about the rate of six vertical inches per week, the area of the lake is thus steadily and inexorably extending. Mr. Mitchell states that should the waters of the river continue to flow into the basin in their present volume, after making the proper allowance for evaporation, it will take from thirty to forty years to fill the entire saucer-like depression up to sea level. Should this ever happen, there would be a lake nearly two thousand square miles in area, the overflow waters of which would eventually reach the gulf by some new channel, cut through the barriers of silt at their weakest point of resistance. On account of treaties between the United States and Mexico the matter of preventing the filling up of the Salton Sea has become one of international importance. The treaty between Mexico and the United States recognizes the Colorado River as a navigable stream to be preserved as such for the joint benefit of both countries. The diversion breaks the treaty. In the meantime, the Colorado, at Calexico, was ten miles wide, pouring its body of water into the Salton Sea by the new river channel, and the lake rose from June 3 to June 19, more than eight feet, and in July of this year the lake was only two miles away from the prosperous agricultural settlement of Mecca which will soon inevitably be obliterated from the map of California. But we are told that the most serious result of the great summer flood has been the "cutting back" of the river bed from the lake toward the intake, in which process a receding waterfall has been formed, to which the fine sandy loam can offer no resistance, and a canyon has been cut one thousand feet wide and thirty feet deep, right through the Imperial country. This "cutting back" toward the intake has continued at the rate of nearly a mile a day, and the waters have thus swept away the Mexican town of Mexicoli, and threaten to destroy thousands of acres of land, besides rendering valueless a large number of beautiful farms which have been redeemed by irrigation in the Imperial Valley.

Affairs in Russia. —History has been making fast in the Russian Empire. On the 22nd of July, the Duma was dissolved by the Czar, and St.

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Petersburg was placed under semi-martial law. Peter Stolypin was then appointed Premier to succeed Goremykin. The following day, the two hundred members of the dissolved Duma held a meeting at Viborg, Finland, and adopted a manifesto to the people of Russia urging them to refuse to pay taxes, or to send conscripts to the army, until the power of the Parliament should be restored. This action was followed in the latter part of July, and early August, by the extreme revolutionary movements in Russia, Poland and Finland; $40,000 of government money was taken from trains which were held up by revolutionists in Poland; two officers and seven men of the accompanying guard were killed. On July 31st the troops of the Sveaborg fortress mutinied, the artillery men seizing some of the forts and bombarding the main fortress. All night long, and far into the following day the fight continued ; but the government finally suppressed the outbreak after hundreds had been killed ; and on the 2nd of August the mutineers surrendered. Immediately following the Sveaborg outbreak another premature and unsuccessful mutiny broke out among the sailors in the fortress Kronstadt. This mutiny was likewise quickly suppressed. Following this there was a calm of some days; but about the middle of August, anarchy again prevailed, and outbreaks were common in al~ most every part in Russia, the police officials being attacked by the Social Revolutionists in all parts of the Empire. The new Premier has given repeated assurance that the regime of representative government is not renounced, but only suspended, and that a new Duma will appear on March 5, 1907, the members of which are to be elected in December "on a basis of universal suffrage, instead of by the indirect, complicated, and discriminative method followed in the selection of delegates to the body lately dissolved." This appears to be a scheme of the bureaucratic government to obtain tools of their own making for the new Duma; whereas, at last spring's election there was no resort to improper modes of influence on the part of Count Witte, a fact which constitutes one of his highest titles of respect, but which, of course, did not endear him to the radical and selfish opponents of free institutions. The manifesto was with greatest difficulty printed, and the distribution of it is finding serious obstacles in its way, so that the people will scarcely be informed upon its contents. While the instrument confined itself

strictly to the recommendation of passive resistance, by refusal on the part of the people to pay taxes, or to furnish conscripts for the army, it is very doubtful whether the Russian people after they have read and pondered it

will consent to restrict themselves in this way. more likely that there will It is

be a concerted and vehement revolt, or at least such a reign of terror as was amply foreshadowed in the events of middle August. As a proof that the Viborg manifesto will not be heeded, the minister -of war has announced that 369,718 of recruits called to the colors for this fall, have already subscribed their

names at the office of the recruiting boards. If the present government can suc-

ceed in collecting the installments, as they become due, on the last loan negotiated in April, the face value of which is $440,000,000, the conflict will be continued on the part of the government without hindrance. Each installment will perhaps keep the government supplied with funds for three months The second installment was paid on August 1, and the next will be due in November. In the

912 IMPR0VEMEN1 ERA. meantime, Russia is the center of the eyes of all those who are anxiously watching the development of one of the greatest struggles for liberty in modern times.

Earthquake in Valparaiso. — On Thursday evening, August 16, at 7:52 o'clock, a violent earthquake shock occurred in Valparaiso and along the coast of Chili. It was followed that night by eighty- two other shocks, which almost complete-

ly destroyed the city, being followed by the ravages of fire. Latest advices place the property loss in Valparasio alone at $170,000,000, and the loss of life at over 500, some say 10,000 persons. The whole population is sleeping in the hills, parks and streets, and there is much destitution and suffering. Large numbers of towns, with populations numbering from two to ten thousand, all along the Chilian coast are reported to have suffered heavily. Railroad and telegraph communication is destroyed. The horror is freely compared to the great cataclysm of San Francisco, and when the full details are known, may even exceed that, as far a? destruction of life is concerned.

Four Missionaries Dead. —Three young men engaged in the missionary field died in The first, Elder Thomas J. Adair, died in the early part of August. St. Johns, Arizona, August 1, on his way home to Luna, New Mexico, from a mis-

sion in the South Western States to which he had been called April 1, 1904. He labored in Arkansas, where he contracted typhoid-malaria which caused his death. He was the son of Samuel N. and Ellen J. Brown, and was born in Nutrioso, Apache Co., Arizona, May 28, 1884. He was a good, energetic and lively spirit. He was buried in St. Johns. The second was Elder Aaron W. Jackson who was accidentally drowned at La Crosse, Wis., August 3, while bathing with two companions in the Black River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Elder Jackson was the son of Aaron and Myrtle Rawson Jackson, and»jvas born in Ogdan about twenty two years ago, and had been in the mission field about one year. He was a bright and energetic young man. His body was accompanied to Ogden, Utah, by President German E. Ellsworth, of the Northern States Mission. On August 6, Elder Wallace L. Johnson, an obedient and faithful young man, died at Albany, New York, of appendicitis, and his remains were taken home to Linden, Utah, with Elder Jesse Bean in charge. Elder Johnson was born May 3, 1887, and was set apart to his mission in the Eastern States in March, 1905. He is the son of Gustave and Myrtle Johnson win removed Lo Utah from Illinois some time ago. On the 26th of July, in Auckland, New Zealand, Elder George W. Stevens died of brain- fever, at Invercargilt Hospital.. His illness was of only short duration. He was only ten days in the hospital. Elder Stevens was born in Ephraim, Utah, January 19, 1873. His nome was in Ferron, Emery Co., Utah. He left to- his mission in New Zealand in December, 1905. fill Toe body was snipped to Utah from Auckland, August 16, accompanied bv Elder Hyrum L. Baker. The Era extends its deepest sympathy to the relatives and friends of these noble young men who have laid down their lives while in the service of the Lord.