To John McKinlay   7 June 1863

Melbourne bot Garden

7. June 1863

Dear Mr M'Kinlay.

It was only within the last days (I confess it to my discredit) that I carefully examined the map of the track, which you laid so gloriously across the Australian Continent.1 It was thus for the first time that I perceived you had done me the honor of naming a watercourse with my paternal name.2 Accept for this token of friendship, which I prize as the highest gift you or any one could bestow on me, the expression of my most grateful acknowledgment. I shall esteem it as one of the greatest honors I ever had bestowed on me, that my name has become thus connected with that enterprise of yours, for which you have earned the whole worlds admiration. I cannot do much to reciprocate your generous act, but it will be a source of gratification to me to attach to some noble new plant of the interior your name,3 and though this may be but a humble tribut of my gratitude and respect, it will nevertheless as one as imperishable as nature herself be kindfully accepted by you.

Trusting that you are enjoying your well earned triumph in happiness and health and that we shall again on some future occasion derive advantage from your talents and experience for exploration, I remain, dear Mr M'Kinlay, your attached

Ferd. Mueller.

 

Many of the seeds, you so kindly presented, have germinated and promise to furnish excellent plants.

1
McKinlay crossed Australia from south to north in 1861-2 while leading a relief expedition in search of Burke and Wills.
2
McKinlay for a time followed a 'magnificent stream' in the vicinity of 22° S, 142° E: 'it is at least 250 yards wide, and from forty to fifty feet down the banks to the water, lined with noble gums, box, bean, and other trees …'. This he named Mueller's Creek. (There had been good rains in the area, and much of the country to the southward was flooded at the time.) To the east, he named a 'well-defined range' Mount Mueller; see McKinlay (1863) pp. 72-3. 'Mueller's Range' is still shown on modern maps, but the 'magnificent stream' proved to be a stretch of the same river named Diamantina by William Landsborough, leader of another of the Burke & Wills relief expeditions, in honour of Lady Diamantina Bowen, wife of Sir George Bowen. Governor of Queensland; and Landsborough's name prevailed despite the priority of McKinlay's naming. See M to A. Petermann, 24 October 1876.
3
Mackinlaya macrosciadea (B64.06.01, p. 120).

Please cite as “FVM-63-06-07,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on 18 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/63-06-07