Smyrna times., 1881-09-14

NoTEs.-The old story that crime is an
Improbable profession. The train robbers
who boarded the train on the Chicago and
Alton, last week, secured in all, it is said,
less than $1,000. Seventeen men were
engaged in the conspiracy, and, if they es-
cape arrest, will receive less than 5000
man for piece Of work which required
great courage, subjected them to great
risk, must have cost them q good deal of
preparation, and leaves them all with
future chance of the penitentiary, not to
say Judge LyReh's rope, upon detection.
The dividends of highway robbery are too
small and the assessments are too sure,
By the latest news from the counties of
Michigan ravaged by forest fires, the fear
full death list grows, and it is now believed
that no fewer than five hundred persons
perished in the terrible tornado of smoke
and flame. The record of great forest
confagrations in this country affords no
parallel to this for wholesale destruction
of life. There was greater loss ofproperty
in the fires of 1872, which entirely swept
away many large villages in Michigan and
Wisconsin, but the death roll did not
reach such frightful proportions, The
region now devastated includes large areas
of the counties of Sanilac and Huron,
which front upon Lake Huron below
Saginaw Bay, and Of the counties of Tus-
cola, Lapeer and Saginaw, lying further
iAland. Details are given in another col
umn.
A queer state of affairs prevails in
Egypt. The mutinous soldiers have
succeeded in completely cOwing the Khe-
dive, and he has changed his Ministry
at their dictiOn. He dares not appeal to
his nominal suzerain, the Sultan, for a
Turkish force to keep his own army in
order, for fear that such step would
bring hiul Huder actual subjection to the
Porte. Meanwhile his finances are in the
hands of English and French agents
acting as trustees for the foreign bondhold.
ers- Thus the poor ViceFOy, with all his
gorgeous Oriental court, his numerous
palaces and his costly harem, can neither
command his own soldiers nor control his
own revenue. The emergency will al
least cause some alarm in European Cabi.
nets, as control of the Suez Canal is linked
inseparably with the fate of Egypt:
If the ingenious compiler of Mother
ShiptOn's poetical prophecy that the world
would come to an end in 1881, says the
Tribune, cannot set up as prophet on his
own account, he can at least claim to have
named in his rhyming mood most phen.
omenal year. What with a varied assort
ment of comets, singular atmospheric dem
onstrations in New England. the remark
able and infrequent mirage seen off the
Jersey coast, the intense heat and the ex
tensive and extended dsoutb in this ,coun
try, the year has been phenomenal in it,
natural aspects. IT has been marked
equally by destructive floods, winds api
} hres in every part of the globe, respAtips
an the loss of many lives and waste o
much property. Even the crimes of tbs
year have been startling in their number
and character, ranging from the assassina
tions of two rulers 10 the detection of I
fifteen or twenty times bigamist. Ant
not the least remarkable aad impressiv,
OF the years many strange incidents wa,
fhe spectacle Of whole people in earncs
supplication to the Almighty Arbiter o
Nations to grant the blessing of an almos
mbacnleus recovery of beloved ruler.