To Louise Matthiessen   6 July 1889

6/7/89.

Let me offer once more my felicitation, dear Louise, by a direct letter to yourself, and express also all my best wishes to your worthy husband, that through a long life all worldly happiness may be shared by you in the richest measure.¹ Rural life is the most independent, the most healthy and — taking it all in all — the most pleasant. I like to send my best salutation to all my new relatives, with whom through you we became so happily connected. If I do not write often, then kindly remember, that my mind is heavily taxed, work-days and holidays, with departmental duties or scientific obligations, so that I feel generally at late night-hours, when I retire from my multifarious work, so prostrated mentally, that I cannot make the additional effort of writing letters beyond what my public position demands from me. The years 1887, 1888 & 1889 were particularly replete with extra-work for the Exhibition,² the medical Congress,³ the geographic Society and litterary engagements, and now every day arises already some duty connected with the Austral. Assoc. for the advancement of science.⁴ So excuse it, if I do not write much, but I shall watch your future with all that deep interest, which near relationship and your own worth call forth.

With best regards to all of you

Ferd. von Mueller.

When on my lonely ride in 1851 to the Elders Range,⁵ the Rocky River country was almost new settled