Newport weekly independent., 1902-05-16

St. Lotus for Sl.2O per bushel.
 Twenty-four persons were badly injured by an explosion of natural gas in rooming house at Marion, Ind.
 Illinois coal miners and operators have agreed to arbitrate differences as to wages and a strike will be averted.
 A dispatch of the 10th inst. says a heavy snow fell over the central part of Michigan on the above date. Fruit and crops of all kinds were badly damaged.
 At the meeting held in Denver of the National Association of Club Women, the question of admitting colored women's clubs to the asso- citation was defeated.
 Gov. Taft will visit Rome on the mission of reaching an understand ing for the absolute separation of church and state in the Philippines, to arrange tentatively for the pur- chase of the friars' lands, settle the rights to property held for educa- tional and charitable purposes, and the title to certain lands now held by the government, on which build ings for religious purposes have been built.
 Attorney General Crow, of Mis- souri, has filed in the state supreme court an custer suit against the Armour Packing Company, the Hammond Packing Company, the Cudahy Packing Company, Armour & Co.,, Swift & Go. and the Henry krug Packing Company. The writ asks that the certificates of these companies be taken from them, and that they be busted from doing bus mess in Missouri, alleging viola tions of the antitrust law of the state.
 The eruption on the Island of Martinique, where the city of St. Pierre was virtually wiped out, con tinued for several days, and many deaths are reported from other parts of the West Indies. The disaster to St. Pierre is the most appalling of the kind in the worlds history. On the Island of St. Vincent over 500 people have perished, and in many districts every living being fell a victim. The scenes as described by correspondents were terrible. AS the lava rushed into the sea at St. Pierre the water receded three hun dred feet all along the west coast. Returning with greater strength, a big wave covered the whole sea front of St. Pierre. Terrible detonations were heard hundreds of miles north ward, followed at short, irregular intervals and continued at night. In the intense darkness the light failed, bat the town was lit up by lurid flames from. the mountains. The terror-stricken inhabitants rushed for the hills in their night clothes, screaming, shouting and wailing, mad with terror. Thirty five persons, mostly women and children, who escaped in a small boat, furnished the above details. During the afternoon of the Sth the British steamer Roddam, which had left St. Lucia at midnight, on the Eth for Martinique, crawled slowly into the Castries harbor, un- recognizable, gray with ashes, her rigging dismantled and sheets and awnings hanging about, torn and .charred. Capt. Whatter reported that, having just cast anchor off St. Pierre at s a. m. in fine weather, succeeding an awful thunderstorm during the night, he was talking to the ships agent, when he saw a tro- mcndous cloud of smoke and glow ing cinders rushing with terrific ra- pidity over the town and port, com pletely in an instant enveloping the former in a sheet of flame, and rain- ipU fro on boorJ Couo,ol oe IL .