CHAPTER V.
THE HERALD EXPEDITION OF SEARCH.
The Great Development of Modern Journalism — The Telegraph — James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond — The Magnitude of American Journalistic Enterprise — The Herald Special Search Expedition for Dr. Livingstone — Stanley as a Correspondent — The Expedition on its Way Toward Livingstone.
It has already been remarked that among the many important events which had occurred in Christendom during Dr. Livingstone’s first great series of explorations in Africa there were none of greater importance to mankind than the invention of the magnetic telegraph, and the prodigious development, consequent thereon—at least in great part—of the newspaper press. There is not so much difference in means of travel, between the great, lumbering wagon of Cape Colony, drawn by a number of oxen which get over a few miles in a whole day and the means of travel by the best of Americas great railways, as there is between the means of current daily intelligence in 1872 and the means of that current daily intelligence as they existed when Dr. Livingstone first placed foot in Africa. If a daily journal of the manner and style of one of that time were to be now established, it would be looked upon like a curious relic of the past or an old almanac.
A BAOBAB TREE.
Nor is it strictly just to attribute the wonderful development of public journalism since about the year 1840 wholly to the success of Prof. Morse’s invention of the magnetic telegraph. His success was largely due to the press, which at the time he sought aid of Congress in behalf of his discovery had already begun to be something more and something better than the mere organ of power or of party. At any rate it may with perfect safety be said that the practical success of Prof. Morse’s invention was considerably hastened by the influence of a public press into which had recently been infused an independent spirit and a consequent influence before unknown. Up to about the time of which we speak the most widely circulated journals of the United States had been printed at the National Capital, a city which had never been representative of the country’s trade, its literature, science, art, or labor. It was only the seat of government, the centre of the political power of a nation which claimed to lodge its political power in the people. Here flourished a number of journalists of the old school, whose skill in political manipulation, money making, and editorials without beginning and without end, can never be surpassed. There is at this time more intelligence of the current events of the day in the poorest daily journals of the “far West” than there used to be in the “national organs” of the respective political parties contending for the control of our national polity. That neither one nor the other could have justly claimed any great amount of practical wisdom may be asserted with confidence since the result of the rule of both—now one and now the other—for a long period of years was a civil war of long duration and exhaustive effects, growing out of a question which both the great parties of the times had “finally” settled by act of Congress and solemn resolution on more than one memorable occasion.
It was while this not very admirable fooling was about at its height, that certain knights of the quill, no less adventurous in their enterprises than Dr. Livingstone was in his explorations through the wilds of Africa, established themselves in the commercial metropolis of America, and soon became the head of a power in the land scarcely second to that of the government. If not a new estate in government, this power became a new estate in society. There sprang up an entirely new literature; a literature which, as regularly as the sun, appeared every morning, and soon came to be, to all well informed persons, about as necessary as the sun is to the physical world. There was no subject too abstruse, none too sacred, none too high, and few too low for the essays of the brilliant, daring, dashing minds which about this time threw themselves into the arena of journalism. Not a few who had been distinguished in the literature of former days became journalists, and the most celebrated of American novelists, the illustrious author of the “Leatherstocking Tales,” finding himself too “slow” for the times, became incurably disgusted with men who cared little for venerable antiquity, and spoke of thrones and principalities, and powers, not to mention the writers of books, with all the sarcasm, wit, and irreverence of Junius and with infinitely more popular power. Here was, as we have said, a new literature. What difference was it that the individual essays were only for a day? Every day there were essays equally good, and they treated of political topics more fully and candidly than political topics had ever been discussed before by public journals, and they also treated of almost everything else under the sun. Every advance in science, every attempt at social or political reform, every humanitarian endeavor, every attack upon abuse and crime claimed to be hallowed by the lapse of time, every current event of importance of every kind, whether of fact or of idea, here in this wonderful kaleidescope could be seen, and then seen to give way to new spectacles of equal interest. Here the people were educated. There never has been discovered a means of education so powerful and so universal. It is, doubtless, owing to the fact that so many minds in America capable of creating a “permanent literature” devoted themselves to this potential means of influence, thereby losing their individuality but for the time being augmenting their power, that we have not yet produced an American Thackeray or even an American Dickens. In the formative era of what may well be called journalism proper, a very large proportion of existing genius has been called into such active use, in America, that it has not had leisure for books. And even in England, many of the most distinguished thinkers have served their regular terms as journalists.
A REMARKABLE WASP NEST FOUND IN AFRICA.