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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: A REMARKABLE WASP NEST FOUND IN AFRICA.]
Among the most celebrated of modern journalists was James Gordon
Bennett, the founder of the New York “Herald” newspaper. A native of
Scotland and a Roman Catholic in religion, he was educated for the
priesthood, but whether, like John Randolph of Roanoke, he perceived
that he had “too much spice of ‘old Nick’” in his composition for the
sacred calling, or on other account, he did not take orders, but
emigrated to America instead. After various fortune--generally
misfortune--embracing teaching, translating, and associate-editorship,
he embarked upon the “Herald” enterprise in 1835. It was not until some
years afterwards, however, that this journal acquired any considerable
reputation outside the city of New York, and inaugurated those news
enterprises which made it so celebrated and a not unfaithful chronicler
of the passing events of the whole world. During the era of “special
correspondence” the “Herald” maintained an extensive corps of writers in
Europe and other foreign countries, who ever gave to the paper great
interest and value.
Meantime, other young men, since distinguished, had been educating
themselves as journalists, and, like Bennett, through various fortune.
Among them was Horace Greeley, who established the first penny daily
paper ever published in the world, but its foundations soon gave way. In
1841 the “Tribune” was established, and Mr. Bennett discovered in the
great and varied abilities of Mr. Greeley and Henry J. Raymond,
assistant editor, rivals whom no assaults could repress, and whose
influence soon began to be felt and acknowledged throughout the country.
The warfare long waged between these journalistic giants was always
sharp, often fierce. The intense rivalry greatly augmented the
enterprise of the printing offices which at length became vast
establishments, employing thousands of men, from the greatest intellects
of the age to the ragged urchins on the street, and receiving and
disbursing vast sums of money.
The invention of the telegraph added immensely to the scope and power of
the daily press. Greatly increasing its expenditures, it also greatly
augmented its circulation and profits. Its demand for brain-labor became
perfectly prodigious, and it almost monopolized the genius of the land.
In the city of New York there were established within a very few years
after Morse’s invention had begun regularly to click the news of the day
no less than four morning journals of acknowledged reputation throughout
the world, and which upon certain memorable occasions of current
intelligence have contained in their combined columns nearly as great an
amount of reading matter as the whole of Bancroft’s history of the
United States.[1] The average quantity of these journals’ reading
matter, of interest to the general public, is equivalent, every day, to
from three to five volumes of Bancroft’s distinguished work.
[1] As I write this, I take a copy of the Chicago “Tribune” of the
day, and find, by actual calculation, that it contains reading matter,
exclusive of advertisements, equivalent to more than 350 pages of
Bancroft. Among this matter is a profoundly thoughtful speech by
Horace Greeley, delivered hundreds of miles distant the night before.
Other cities of the republic have been little if any behind the
commercial and financial metropolis, excepting only the city of
Washington whose most successful journalism of the old school has given
way at last till quite recently to a series of wretched failures.
Editorials of a journal published in the largest city of our Lake
country, which was a straggling hamlet when Dr. Livingstone first went
to Africa, have been known to make the proudest speculators of Wall
street tremble, and powerful corporations to abandon long-conceived
schemes of injustice. In an exhaustive article on the United States
census of 1860, the New York “Tribune” said of the public press:
“The very great increase in the circulation of newspapers and
periodicals during the last ten years is an evidence at once of a high
degree of popular intelligence and of a high standard of journalistic
ability. There is no doubt that this country has the best, and the best
sustained public press in the world--the best, we mean, for the people
and not merely the learned few. Newspapers penetrate to every part of
the country, reach even the most obscure hamlet, and find their way to
almost every household. Printing offices go with the vanguard of
civilization toward the west, and in the ‘new country’ are about as
numerous as the mills. The dailies of the great cities cannot be carried
by the government mails; they have created, during the decade, an
entirely new line of business, supporting thousands of families; on
issues fairly joined they have defeated many of the most maturely
considered measures of Congressional Committees.”
Having given the statistics in regard to the number and circulation of
the periodicals and papers of the country at the time under examination,
the article goes on to say:
“The total number of daily papers thrown from the press during the year
is about half that of all the other papers and periodicals combined.
Supposing each one to weigh an ounce, the weight of the whole number of
daily papers printed in the United States during the year of the census
was 28,644,678 pounds avoirdupois--enough to load 14,322 wagons with a
ton each, or to make a train of them seventy miles in length. Were all
the papers and periodicals printed in 1860 placed in such a train, it
would reach from New York to Richmond. Should they be pasted into one
vast sheet, they would make a covering for the continent, and leave a
remnant large enough to shut out the sun from the British Islands.
“But, not to dwell upon the mere material aspect of the Public Press of
America, it will suffice to say that if its records shall be preserved
the historian of two thousand years hence who shall narrate the events
which are now taking place, will find upon their dingy pages his best
authorities and his most trustworthy sources of philosophical
generalization. Not all that is left of Grecian literature, not all the
grand works of the fine old Romans, give so correct a picture of the
great peoples of antiquity as the daily papers of America are now taking
of a people far greater than that whose phalanges swept down the
barbarians from the Hellespont to the Indus, or than that ‘the tramp of
whose legions echoed round the world.’”
To such magnificent proportions and such stupendous influence had the
American press grown during Livingstone’s first sojourn in Africa. When
he left England, its chief business was to chronicle small beer. When
he returned its power was more than imperial, and all exercised through
persuasion. As it had grown in America, so it had been immensely
developed in other lands, but in respect of the publication of current
intelligence at the time of the happening of events, the American press
is not approached by that of any other country. There is more
telegraphic news in almost any number of any Chicago daily, for example,
than the average quantity of such intelligence in the London “Times.”
An additional impetus to the enterprise of journalism was given by the
success of the Atlantic cable during Dr. Livingstone’s second great
expedition to Africa. It is difficult to believe these great facts
though they have occurred before our very eyes. This wonderful
achievement of science, aided by the no less wonderful enterprise of the
daily press of the United States, made the inhabitants of Christendom
like next-door neighbors. A dispatch from Athens in Greece, was once
published by all the evening daily journals of the United States at an
earlier hour than its date. The difference of time and the “girdle round
about the earth” put the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley, as they
took their suppers, in a situation in which they might have criticised
an oration by Demosthenes before he had gone to bed, had Demosthenes
belonged to this day and generation.
Thus had the press become the great means of the dissemination of
knowledge, and by reason of the wonderful enterprise of its most
distinguished representative men, far more potential in the affairs of
the world than any potentate or any government. It had come to be
acknowledged as of the greatest consequence in the dissemination of
science, in popularizing literature, in aiding moral, social, and
political reform. But the irrepressibility of its enterprising spirit,
its superiority even to the most powerful government in respect of
obtaining intelligence remained to be conclusively shown. And even this
was done by the expedition of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, in the employ of the
New York “Herald,” in search of Dr. Livingstone, long lost from
Christendom in the wilds of central Africa.
So deep an interest did the government of Great Britain take in
discovering the truth of the reports of the explorer’s death, first
given to the world through the story of Ali Moosa, as condensed by Dr.
Seward, English Resident Agent at Zanzibar--the substance of which
appears in the preceeding chapter--that an expedition in that behalf was
organized, and after many hundred miles of journeyings by river and land
found unmistakable evidences that Moosa’s story was a cruel fabrication.
So, too, when years had elapsed without definite information from Dr.
Livingstone, and there arose a world of wild conjecture as to his fate,
the British government again organized an expedition of search, which,
as we have seen, was at last accounts from it at Zanzibar, well prepared
for an expedition inland but waiting for a proper season at which to
begin the journey.
[Illustration: HENRY M. STANLEY, AS HE APPEARED ON HIS FIRST
EXPEDITION.]
Meantime the great discoverer is discovered in the heart of equatorial
Africa by Mr. Henry M. Stanley, in command of an expedition of search
sent out under the auspices of an American newspaper, the New York
“Herald.” Thus did newspaper enterprise accomplish that in which the
combined efforts of wealthy religious societies, learned corporate
bodies, and one of the most powerful governments of earth had failed. A
brief account of this unique expedition will be of interest:
During the civil war in the United States--1861-65--among the many “war
correspondents” of the “Herald” was Mr. Stanley, just mentioned. He was
not so much distinguished as a writer as he was valuable to the journal
on account of his fearless nature and his restless activity. In
imitation of Tennyson’s charge of the Light Brigade, he would pursue an
item if the search should carry him “into the jaws of hell.” Restrained
by no danger, almost insensible to fatigue, he could ride all day and
write all night almost, and keep up this hard work for an indefinite
period. After the war he went abroad and from various countries,
generally out of the way of ordinary lines of travel, corresponded with
the “Herald.” When the proprietors of that journal--the elder Mr.
Bennett was then living--determined to organize a “Herald Special Search
Expedition,” they naturally selected Mr. Stanley as its commander. This
was in 1868. Mr. Stanley at once accepted the charge, and, after some
hesitation as to whether he should proceed through Egypt up the Nile, or
by way of Zanzibar and then westward overland, or by the line of the
river Rovuma, the route taken by Livingstone, he at length resolved to
go by way of Zanzibar. This is an island, and town also of the same
name, off the coast of Zanguebar, and is toward the southern limit of
Mohammedan rule in Africa. Here Mr. Stanley arrived in due season, and
hence wrote his first letter in this special service, under date of
February 9, 1869. It chiefly had reference to Livingstone’s previous
explorations, the story of his death, and its refutation. But the report
that he was only about a week’s march inland from Zanzibar also received
a quietus, and Mr. Stanley was well nigh persuaded to retrace his steps
to Egypt and proceed by way of the Nile, in consequence of the following
note from the United States Vice Consul:
“ISLAND OF ZANZIBAR, Dec. 26, 1868.
“DEAR SIR--I should be most happy to assist you in any way whatever;
but, in reply to your note, I beg to assure you of my candid belief of
his non-appearance. There is not the slightest probability of his ever
coming again to this island. Dr. Kirk the British Vice Consul here,
and who was with Dr. Livingstone for some years during his travels in
Africa, thinks it more than probable that he will come out at the
Nile, and has not the least expectation of having the pleasure of
seeing him here. In September, 1868, Her Majesty’s ship Octavia, Sir
Leopold Heath, C. B., left here, and as I see by the Bombay papers, on
her arrival at Trincomalee, which is in Ceylon, reported that when she
left Zanzibar Dr. Livingstone was reported within a week’s march of
the coast. This, if you saw it, probably misled you also to believe he
would come here, but it is hardly necessary to say that the statement
was without the slightest foundation of truth, and was probably
written from some entire misconception by the writer of some
conversation which took place between him and Dr. Kirk. Trusting,
however, you will succeed on the other side, I am, dear sir, very
respectfully
“FRANCIS R. WEBB,
“United States Vice Consul.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Stanley determined to go on and telegraphing to an
acquaintance residing at Khartoum, Upper Nubia, to send him word, if
anything should be heard from Livingstone, went forward with the
preparations for his journey. He was doubtless cognizant of the fact
also, that the “Herald” had another Search expedition on foot to which
the Khedive of Egypt was rendering generous encouragement and
assistance. It may well be imagined that the drafts upon the “Herald” at
this time for necessary outlays in the purchase of horses, asses, and
supplies and the employment of a sufficient escort--mainly consisting of
a number of Arabs--were not light. The preparations, after months’
delay, caused by war in the interior, were at length made, and the
expedition left Zanzibar on the long-ago trail of the great explorer.
And here it will be proper, while we are awaiting intelligence of its
difficulties and final great success, to speak of the previous life of
him who was to make so many hearts glad by tidings of the safety of the
most distinguished explorer of our times.
[Illustration: AN AFRICAN MUSICIAN.]