To William Branwhite Clarke1    23 September 1864

23/9/64.

Reverend & dear Sir.

The honorable Dr Wilkie & myself have been appointed this day to report on the evidence extant on the fate of poor Dr Leichhardt, more particularly as regards the supposed graves of white men found by Messrs Giles & Conn.2 Your elaborate letter published some years ago3 will be considered & Dr Wilkie & myself beg of you to ascertain from Luff4 or any one of Kennedy's party, whether the tree bearing an L near the confluence of the Alice R with Cooper's Creek could have been marked by them as you surmise. It occurs to us that someone of Kennedys party may be within your reach of direct enquiry. Our report has to be brought up 2 weeks from this day to the Royal Society, who then will communicate to Government on the subject.5 If you could kindly afford us the information, should such be obtained in time, we should feel greatly indebted & might advance a step further in unveiling the fate of your missing friend & my unfortunate countryman.

Cordially

yr

Ferd. Mueller

1
MS envelope front: 'On her Majestys Service | The Reverend W. B. Clarke | F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.S. &c &c &c MA | St Leonards | near | Sydney | Ferd Mueller'. Back stamped Ship Letter, Sydney, 27 September 1864.
2
See E. Giles to Editor of the Argus, 27 August 1864, p. 6, and W. Conn to M, 5 September 1864. At the meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria on 19 September 1864, ‘The Hon, D. Wilkie, M.L.C., enquired if anything had been done in reference to Messrs. Giles and Conn’s discoveries of white men’s graves in the interior’. The matter was referred to the Society’s Exploration Committee.
3
Probably ‘Leichhardt and the Desert’, Sydney morning herald, 24 August 1858, pp. 4-5.
4
M is confused here. James Luff was a member of Edmund Kennedy’s Cape York expedition in 1848 of which only the Aboriginal guide Jackey Jackey survived, whereas M is seeking information about Kennedy’s earlier expedition (1847) to the Qld channel country.
5
M presented the Exploration Committee’s report at the Society’s next meeting, on 10 October, when it was agreed that a copy of the report should be sent to Augustus Gregory in Qld, ‘to obtain his opinion as to the utility of further investigation concerning Leichhardt’s fate’.

Please cite as “FVM-64-09-23,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/64-09-23