Читать книгу Stanley's Story; Or, Through the Wilds of Africa - A. G. Col. Feather - Страница 11

Table of Contents

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.

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.

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.

AN AFRICAN MUSICIAN.