Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter no found. The text given here is from South Australian register, 30 September 1893, p. 7, as part of a report of the previous day's proceedings of the Geography Section at the 5th Congress of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, then being held in Adelaide. The text is introduced: 'Baron F. von Mueller forwarded notes in advocacy of another attempt being made to find traces of Dr. Leichardt and his party, lost since 1848. The Baron remarked:—'.

M had been too ill attend the meeting; see M to M. Holtze, 25 September 1893 (in this edition as 93-09-25c). M's letter was not included in the published proceedings of the Congress.

Leichardt was last heard of from the Cogoon, on the Fitzroy Downs.

2

Qld.

He had horses, oxen, and mules, but no wheeled vehicle, so that the finding of remnants of a cart near an L-tree not far from the MacDonnell Ranges,

3

Central Australia.

supposed to indicate the presence of members of the Leichardt party there for connecting these two subjects, does not rest on wrong grounds.

4

Typesetter's mistake for strong?

Mr. Thomson, at my request, recently again ascertained at McPherson's Station

5

Allan Macpherson.

that Leichardt had no cart with him, which, indeed, would have been too great a hindrance in his progress. The discovery of what may have been a Leichardt camp on the Elsey River

6

Elsey Creek, NT, during the North Australian Exploring Expedition, 1855-6.

by Gregory; of L-trees on the Alice and Thomson Rivers,

7

Qld.

also by Gregory and by Walker; the finding of L-trees and two very old horses on the Flinders River

8

Qld, during the Ladies' Leichhardt Search Expedition, 1865.

in 1865 by MacIntyre; and the tradition of the natives at Johanna Spring,

9

WA.

as recorded by McPhee, of a party of three whites and an aboriginal coming with horses very long ago from the North-East and perishing for want of water ten days' walk south-east of Johanna Spring; and further, the information brought by Colonel Warburton already about L-trees near the Johanna Spring, all these tend to show that Leichardt did adhere to his original plan of skirting (by keeping towards the north coast) Sturt's and other great central Australian deserts, and in all probability did thus accomplish two-thirds of his gigantic and perilous task. To search for his death-place from the east would be a far less hopeful plan than starting a small party from Lagrange Bay,

10

WA.

for which pursuit the Chevalier Giles

11

In 1875 Ernest Giles had received a knighthood in the Order of the Crown of Italy.

or some other explorer readily would be available, and for which errand in the cause of humanity much facility is afforde by dromedaries being at command in yonder regions. At Johanna Springs Giles could be taken to the oasis, ten further days south-easterly, where a friendly tribe saw corpses of the perished explorer s , and where still an axe and other remnants of the party are kept. This would simultaneously be a penetration right into the centre of the great north-western desert, would doubtless lead to the discovery of new pastoral and gold country at a comparatively limited expense, and would be a definite testing on a certain line as regards the rumours set afloat by the Johanna Spring natives, who could have no object in offering these traditions quite on their own accord merely to invent misleading stories. This would be worthily following up the searches of Hovendon, Hely,

12

i.e. Hovenden Hely.

Gregory, MacIntyre (the emissary of the brave Melbourne Ladies' Leichardt Search Committee of 1865—most of them now numbering with the dead). The Adelaide meeting might then decide by formal resolutions on the indicated new expedition and on securing there and then the funds for it at once. It would be a glorious act, the melancholic lustre of which would add for all time to the renown of the Adelaide meeting of 1893. My own first appeal on behalf of Dr. Leichardt and his companions was made about 1850 —indeed also from South Australia—when a letter from Sir Thomas Mitchell to me was published in the South Australian ,

13

Letter not found; no copy of the relevant issue of the newspaper has been located. See, however, M to T. Mitchell, November 1851 (in this edition as 51-11-00).

and when in the German newspaper of Adelaide I proposed at some length of detail a search from the Albert River southward,

14

M to the Editor of the Deutsche Zeitung, July 1851 (in this edition as 51-07-00).

views which subsequent events proved as having been quite recommendatory at the time. This year's season is singularly favourable for any Australian desert travels, and Leichardt's last position cannot be very far from the boundary of South Australia, which colony, indeed, he also much enriched by his early northern discoveries. As regards the causes of the annihilation of the expedition, four could bring this sad fate about, namely—floods, hostility of the natives, discord in the party, or want of water. The last mentioned would have an overwhelming probability for it. Leichardt was a Gold Medallist of the R . G . S .

15

Royal Geographical Society.

of London and of the Paris Geographic Society. His mapping during the first expedition was as extensive as his discovery of pastoral country was vast, not to speak of no end of watercourses and ranges all now studded with stations and other settlements. It is almost a stigma to Australia, notwithstanding some heroic efforts made, that we could not yet fix the extent of his l ast, and, doubtless, also brilliant achievements, and that we could neither yet build a tomb over his and his comrades remains. Indeed it has taken less time to trace even the fates of La Perouse and of Franklin

16

The wreckage of the French explorer La Pérouse's ships, missing since 1788, were found on a reef on the island of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands in 1826; the fate of Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition, missing since 1845, was learned from local Inuit hunters in 1854.

under infinitely greater doubts and difficulties to contend with than have beset for the forty-five years now lapsed already since the Prussian geographer disappeared to solve the mysteries of his lamentable and cruel fate.