FIORDLAND MYSTERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 11

FIORDLAND MYSTERY.

NAKED FOOTPRINT SEEN. RECENT DISCOVERIES. ARE THERE INHABITANTS? (By SKIPPER.) "Sunday, March 28, 1773.—50me of the officers on 28th went up the hay (Dusky Sound) in a small boat on a shooting party; hut discovering inhabitants they returned before noon to acquaint' me therewith; for hitherto we had not seen, the least vestigo .of any. They are of the same race of people with those in the other parts of the country. What could induce three or four families to separate themselves so far from the society of the rest of their fellows is not easy to guess." I So wrote Captain James Cook, commanding His Majesty's ship Resolution, in his "Voyage Towards the South Pole Performed in the Years 1772-75," and now, after a lapse of over one hundred and fifty years, another "shooting party" has brought to the dwellers in cities a breath of romance and conjecture from that grim, foreboding mass of glittering peaks and gloomy valleys that is New Zealand's real "Never-Never Country." "The discovery in March last by a party of stalkers, in a remote and lonely arm of Lake Te Anau, of a human thigh-bone, in a locality rarely visited by human beings, opens up interesting possibilities. On their return to Invercargill they learned that a previous stalking party had found the imprint of a man's bare foot, perfectly defined in soft earth, in a locality which no human being had been known to have visited before." Thus a report published this month; but as can be seen from Captain Cook's Journal, the bald journalistic statement that no human being had ever been known to have visited that locality before is hardly correct. What Became of the Natives? Apart from his Journal, Cook has left a memorial to the natives' existence in the name given by him to the river that runs into the head of Dusky Sound, "Wild Natives River," and corroborative evidence of their wild and turbulent nature at a later date is to be found in the scratchings on a lump of slate—now in the Invercargill Museum—of an unknown whaler who, in a spirit of altruism, warns future comers that his crew had been attacked, and to beware lest they, too, share the same fate. Maori legend and European history are rich in information as to the doings of the various tribes, but are uncannily silent as to the identity or ultimate fate of these isolated families. Who were they? Where did they come from? What were they doing there? Most important of all, where did they go? The late Mr. Topi Patuki, hereditary chief of the remaining tribe in Southland, and no mean authority on the history of his people, was firmly of the opinion that, hidden away in some gloomy mountain fastness would be found a remnant of these people, living, perchance, like a Highland clan of the olden time, shut off from and utterly oblivious to the march of civilisation. A Discovery Doubted. Some forty years ago a local amateur artist, imbued with the desire inherent in some men to see what lies beyond the ranges, and hoping to preserve some record, however imperfect, of the stern grandeur of the region, set out with a Maori companion overland from the north fiord of Te Anau for Dusky Sound by way of the Glaisnock River. An unusually heavy and early fall of snow drove hi mand his companion out after one week, and on their return to civilisation they announced that, in a bed of spaghnum moss on the south wall of the valley, they had found the print of a naked human foot. This statement was greeted with whole-hearted scepticism, and as the artist was a prominent supporter of the Prohibition movement it formed the subject of many a joke. Despite laughter and ridicule, the "two-stoutly maintained their story, and there, with the passage of years, the matter was allowed to rest. Expedition in 1925. In 1925, the writer, who formed one of a small coterie who strayed annually into the wilder parts of Fiord County in search of deer, was asked by the Southland Acclimatisation Society if the party would undertake an exploration of the Glaisnock Valley to mark the anticipated northward drift oi the wapiti herd. After some preliminary misfortunes the author and a companion set out "through as rough and gloomy a piece of country as exists anywhere in the world." The valley was never more than one hundred yards across at its widest— the sun's rays on the brightest of days penetrated to the bottom of it between 10.30 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. only—while on either side precipitous mountains rose sheer to a height of about 6000 feet. Our way lay directly along the bank of the river; and while my companion stopped to admire the antics of a friendly pair of mountain ducks, I forged aheacL On reaching an open grassy glade about quarter of an acre in extent, which appeared an easily identifiable spot and so suitable for a dump, I forbode from going any further ancl sat down uudei a tree to await his arrival. The Footprint. Presently I saw him enter the glade from the lower end, stop, gaze hard at the ground in front of him, and then closely scrutinise the edge of the bush until at last he caught sight of me. He smiled broadly, and then informed me that while I was a clever little lad to have thought to jflay Man Friday to his Robinson Crusoe, I had spoiled the effect of the hoax by not keeping under cover. I disclaimed all knowledge of any "hoax," and for my pains, was told to get my boot on, if I had not already done so, and we would get on with the Somewhat mystified, I walked over to him for enlightenment. 1 found liim standing at the edge of a small patch of wet sand, in the middle of which was the perfect imprint of a naked human foot. The fine ridge of sand dividing the imprint of each toe was clearly defined, proof positive that it had no been there on the night of our arrival at the mouth of the river, as the heavy raiit would have blurred the outline. To finalise matters I took off my boot and sock and made a print m the sand alongside that of the mysterious stranger's. It was a longer foot than mine at least two sizes larger; but whereas my print showed the great toe bending inwards towards the otheis, the stranger's imprint had the same_ toe more°uearly parallel to his remaining toes.

As we gazed in silence at the two footprints before us in that square yard of wet sand, the bush seemed danker, the valley more gloomy; and (under the cloak of anonymity) I have no shame in confessing that I derived much wholesome comfort from the feel of the high velocity rifle slung across my shoulder. "We Said Nothing." Returned to the hatchery, we made judicious inquiries as to possible visitors to the Glaisnock; but, even as we expected, every man, and, moie impoitrnt still, every boat on the lake could bo accounted for. So, remembering the fate of the previous "bare foot' story from the same locality, we said nothing about it, beyond recounting the facts of the discovery to a few intimate friends. As some inkling of the storyhas apparently reached the world at large, it can do no harm to tell it at And now, in March, 1930, a human thigh bone with some. tissue attached is found in this terra incognita. The disappearance many years ago of Quinton Mackinnon, which has been offered as a possible explanation of the discovery, is not in accord with the existing evidence. His boat was foun miles away from the Lugar Burn and not in the North Fiord, If this bone is all that remains of him, how did .it come into a cave a quarter of a mile inland from the Lugar Burn, and where are the rest of his remains? The discovery is not merely, as the PrS? states, I lor tatej coniecture- On the contrary, it is the greatest mystery of modern New Zealand.