In England the London _Times_ is looked up to all over as a Triton among the minnows. It is the great paper. The _Daily Telegraph_ is the cheapest, spiciest paper published there; the _Standard_ is a careful, able Tory organ; the _Post_ is a quiet, aristocratic sheet, but the Thunderer overshadows them all. Instinct with the democratic spirit of our institutions, the press of America looks up to no lord among them. As each man born on the soil may be President of the United States, so each paper--no matter what its origin or where its birthplace--feels within itself the possibility of precedence in point of worth, brains and news over all others. We, therefore, reassert that the triumph of the HERALD Livingstone expedition is the triumph of American journalism in its broadest sense.
To point this something more, we may say that an American war correspondent has achieved what one of the most powerful governments in the world failed to accomplish. How it was done is easily told. It is probable that an English journal might have succeeded, if it had undertaken the task; but, like Columbus with the egg, the enterprise which knocked in the end of the oval difficulty and made the expedition stand for itself is not a British article.
The story of the meeting of the greatest explorer of any time with the HERALD correspondent, by the shores of Lake Tanganyika, with one thousand miles of desert, jungle, jagged mountain path and sodden valley trail, peopled with brutal, ignorant savages, behind him, is one which will long be remembered. The HERALD correspondent has kept his word. Happily for civilization there was no necessity to carry back to distant civilization the relics of her hero. He is alive and well and hopes to carry himself home when he has attained the object of his stay. In March 1866, he started up the Rovuma, but was deserted, and the false Moosa spread the lying story of his death to cover his own poltroonery, as was hoped against hope when the baleful tidings first came to hand. The undaunted Livingstone then set forward and reached the Chambezi River, which he discovered has no connection with the Portuguese Zambesi River, which disembogues into the Mozambique Channel opposite Madagascar. But the gem of his discovery lies in the fact that the Chambezi is the true source of the Nile. He followed its course for seven hundred miles towards its source, but was obliged to turn back in want, with one hundred and eighty miles unexplored. The Chambezi towards its source is called the Lualaba, and is not supplied from Lake Tanganyika, and the latter lake has no effluence to the Nile. To solve the problem of the Lualaba and pass round the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika, Livingstone purposes spending two years more in Central Africa. Truly this is great news, and we congratulate the world that neither the life nor the toil of so great a man is lost to the world, as the fates seemed so grimly to threaten. The story of his solitary land-finding will now be read by joyful millions, who, if they cannot all appreciate fully his labors, will not grudge him the tribute of lasting admiration.