Word has just reached us that the American sailors who were imprisoned for nearly two years in Siberia were safely landed in San Francisco on the 4th of June.
After the Russians had succeeded in deceiving the
American naval officers, as we told you on page 361 of The Great Round World, the sailors gave themselves up for lost.
Their friends in California, however, appealed to our Minister in Russia, and on the 20th of last March an order for their release was sent to the prison.
The sailors lost no time in leaving Siberia, and making their way home to their own country.
Southern California has just been celebrating its annual flower festival. These occasions are so interesting that you would probably like to hear about them.
The flowers of California are beautiful beyond description, and grow in masses that would astonish Eastern eyes. Roses, lilies, daisies, poppies, grow on every side—the cultivated garden flowers growing in the same profusion that our wild flowers do.
The Californians are naturally very proud of their flowers, and when President Harrison was making his trip to the West in 1891, the people of the State very sensibly concluded that in his progress from the East he had seen every kind of flag decoration that the mind could suggest, but that flowers such as they could show him would be a novelty to him.
The people of Santa Barbara therefore decided to hold a flower carnival in their city as a welcome to the President when he visited them.