FIVE MEN MISSING

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 117, 11 February 1926, Page 7

FIVE MEN MISSING

NO NEWS SINCE OCTOBER SEARCH EXPEDITION FORMING Fears are being entertained for the safety of a party of five men in the West Coast Sounds region. They left Elfin Bav during last October for the Martins Bay district to bring out a herd of cattle and have not been heard of since. The missing men are Messrs. Malvin and Hugh McKenzie, Foxcroft, of Auckland, a gold prospector from Dunedin, and a musterer from Lumsden. Inquiries have been made from settlers in .the surrounding country, but no trace of the men has been found. The latest reports from Glenorchy state that a search party has been organised by the National Mortgage and Agency Company, and that the Police Department in Wellington is sending out parties from Westland and Southland.

The fact that a tourist party which spent nearly a month in the district during Christmas visited the McKenzie homestead and the camp at Big Bay and found no trace of human life gives further reason for uneasiness. The country is in its natural state. There are no roads or bridges and the timber growth is exceptionally heavy. An idea of the nature of the country in which the McKenzie brothers live may be trained from the fact in the ordinary course of events they are visited only twice a year by a Government steamer, and that the Great War was in progress for, eight months before news of it reached them. A message from Auckland states that there is little doubt that the Foxcroft who is reported to be one of the partv is Charles G. Foxcroft, of Trafalgar Street, Onehunga, a tinsmith by trade.