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91.11.11

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Ferdinand von Mueller to Henry Stanley, 1891-11-11. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id//letters/1890-6/1891/91-11-11-final.odt>, accessed June 10, 2026

1
Letter not found. For the text given here, see Record (South Melbourne), 14 November 1891, p. 2 (B91.14.03). A. C. Macdonald, as Secretary, read this letter at a meeting of the Victorian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia in Melbourne to welcome H. M. Stanley, on 11 November 1891.
TO H. M. STANLEY, F.R.G.S.
Dear Sir,
It is with much gratification that we, the Council and Members of the Victorian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, hail your arrival on our shores, and bid you heartily Welcome.
Although we find ourselves in the position of being the first to tender you our congratulations, we can assure you, that you could not have landed in any State of our Australian Dominion, without finding a Branch of this Society, numbering among its Members some one connected with Australian Exploration, and all eager to greet one of the greatest of modern Explorers, and to help in making your visit a pleasant one.
For we, Australians, are essentially a race of Explorers and think we are entitled to look with some pride on the face of the map of our Island Continent.
The triumphs which have for ever connected your name with the development of African Geography, are recorded in stirring narratives with which the whole civilized world is familiar.
It has been mainly your work that the map of Africa is now almost complete, and her resources largely unfolded, with an early prospect of immense expansion in her civilisation. A noble work, in which your munificient patrons in the cause of humanity and science, aided by the exertions of your brave and faithful followers, have a full share of grateful recognition.
Your presence amongst us here to-night gives us renewed energy to push forward in our own fields of Geographical researches, discovery and settlement, so that hereafter in majestic Australia happy homes may be won for millions of prosperous people, and for the highest exercise of the human faculties.
May you be spared to see the successful issue of those problems by which Central Africa may be raised to the same high standard in the intellectual scale which all other countries are trying to obtain, as worthy of our present age and our future destiny.
We are, dear Sir,
Your faithful servants,
FERD VON MUELLER, President.
2
M continued to correspond with the Stanleys after they returned to England: Dorothy Stanley to W. Thiselton-Dyer, n.d. but after April 1892, discusses plants sent by M (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 186, f. 128).
A. C. MACDONALD, Hon. Sec.