AMERICAN JOURNALISTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4128, 13 June 1874, Page 3

AMERICAN JOURNALISTS.

[Prom the New York Herald.] As Mr. Stanley is one of the most widelyknown men of the present day we do not think it necessary to dwell at length upon the fact that lie anticipated the English Government in forwarding tlic first intelligence of the fall of Magdala—a piace of news which was the signal for a national jubilee throughout England. Neither nced'we remind the public that the finding of Livingstone recalls one of the boldest and most successful exploits recorded in travel, adventure, and journalism. But beyond these triumphs Mr. Stanley remained to be tried. And, now, having accompanied the second military expedition into a malarial section of Africa as a Herald correspondent, having, for active and untiring competitors, some of tlie best journalists of England, many of them in the secrets of the headquarters, lie telegraphs the terms of the treaty of peace, which the Times of London and other English journals eagerly copy, and, as usual, bears off the substantial journalistic laurels of the war. If we pause to inquire what quality it is in the man that has brought him renewed distinction, we can only answer, it is because lie is a complete journalist. Not only did lie go to Asliantee at the peril of his life, following the staff from the sea, a distance of one hundred and thirty miles, to Coomasrie and send graphic letters descriptive of all tlic operations, but he organised a separate campaign, by which he was the first captor of the .Lisbon telegraph station, whence he wired the important news that all England was anxious to learn. But Mr. Stanley is not alone among Herald correspondents who have justly merited high literary repute admiration, for courageous and chivalric qualities. Mr. T. A. MacGahan, who was recently received by, the American Geographical Society, when General Sherman joined him in a description

of the Caucasus and the land of the ancient Ox us, completed one of the most remarkable and perilous journeys in modem travel, being present at the fall of Khiva, and subsequently fighting in the latter campaign between the 'Turcomans and the Cossacks. It is now about a year since a resolute journalist attached to this staff volunteered to visit Cuba, go into the insurgent lines, and discover if the insurrection was a coreless fraud. All will remember the romantic journey of Mr. James J. o’Kelly ; how he went to Havana ; then pushed boldly for the insurgent camp, in defiance of the Spanish authorities ; his narrow escape from death ; his visit to and interview with Cespedcs ; his arrest and incarceration at Manzanillo, and then the revolting persecutions to which he was subjected up to the moment of his release in Madrid. We need hardly mention Mr. Eox, General F. F. Milieu, and others, to illustrate wlnit we would convey by these lines—that a true journalist must be a thorough man of the world, one of high culture, quick to learn, ready to transmit, having the military quality inborn, possessed of the literary faculty in the first degree, and of that refined instinct which teaches a man not to get killed if lie can help it.