24/7/85.
Dear Sir,
Let me thank you for your kind letter and the friendly attention shown me by sending me Mr Knuckey's letter as published in the S.A. Register,1 which seems fully to explain, who the white aged member is noticed with native tribes on the M'Arthur-River.2 In reference to searches for traces and remnants of Leichhardt's Expedition I fully concur in the opinion of those, who look for the death-places of Leichhardt and his companions some where near Eyre's Creek;3 and but little doubt exists, that the long pending mystery about this geographic tragedy could be solved, if the country between the Hay and Finke-River became explored; as this tract of unmapped country is within the boundaries of South Australia,4 it is more particularly devolving on your colony, that this work of humanity and gratitude towards a great but unfortunate Explorer should be carried out by South Australian means within the area indicated, and I feel sure, that the newly formed branch of the geographic Society of Australia, so well already founded in Adelaide,5 will make the object of revealing Leichhardt's fate the very first question of its consideration and active engagements, and therewith gain at once fame and gratitude in the geographic world.
Regardfully
your
Ferd. von Mueller
'White men among natives in the north', South Australian register, 10 July 1885, p. 7, in which serious doubts were cast upon the supposed identification as Leichhardt of the white man reported to be living 'amongst the blacks on the Macarthur River' in Qld.
NT.
Qld.
i.e. in the NT, then administered by SA.
The South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia had been formed two weeks earlier, on 10 July 1885 (South Australian register, 11 July 1885, p. 6). Several of the founding members were correspondents of M.
MS is bound into a volume, embossed ‘South Australian Papers’ on the spine, that was part of D. S. Mitchell’s original bequest to the State Library of New South Wales in 1907, but of which the earlier provenance is not known. The correspondent is conjectured to be Rigaud on the basis of the inscriptions on the envelope accompanying the manuscript in the archive: 'Letter from Baron Von Mueller re Leichardt &c' and, in a different hand, 'from Mr Rigaud 3/12/86'. Richard J. Rigaud was a member of the commercial staff of the South Australian register and a member of the Royal Society of SA.
Please cite as “FVM-85-07-24,” 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