Dies from Woodtick Bite.
Doctor M. S. McCrillis, a pioneer dentist, of Douglas, Wyo., is dead of spotted fever, caused by the bite of a woodtick. This is the seventh death from spotted fever, or woodtick fever, that has occurred in Wyoming this year.
Owing to the cold, wet spring woodticks are more numerous and especially more poisonous than for many years. Hundreds of persons throughout the State have been or are now ill from the effects of woodtick bites.
Robbers Hold Up Fifteen Hobos.
Two masked men, armed with a revolver and an electric flash light, held up and robbed fifteen hobos while they were sleeping in a box car in Wichita, Kan. The robbers got seventy cents and a plug of tobacco from the fifteen.
When the hobos were ordered to throw up their hands, one refused, and, for his obstinacy, was shot. He died in a hospital. He gave his name as Ben Rider, of Chicago. When the police arrived, the holdup men were searching other box cars in the railroad yards.
Nothing but Water in This Unique Township.
Hyde County, near Kinston, N. C., has the most unique township in the United States. It is “Lake Township,” with barely a square inch of dry land in it and not a single resident.
The biggest drainage undertaking in the history of the[Pg 61] south Atlantic States will next winter reclaim the bottom of Mattamuskeet Lake, one of the two largest fresh-water bodies in the south Atlantic group. Gigantic pumps will drive the water from the lake at the rate of a million gallons a minute.
Mattamuskeet Lake is eighteen miles long and seven miles wide, but at its deepest point is not more than three and one-half feet in depth. The land of the entire county is of a peaty nature, and this basin was burned out by a fire before the coming of the white men. Now, even, such fires sometimes have to be checked by the people.