(”… Every mystery made plain, every unknown land explored, exalts the spirit of the whole human race—strengthens its courage and exalts its spirit permanently. The trail-breaker is an indispensable ally of the spiritual values which advance and sustain civilisation.“—Amundsen, the Polar Explorer.

(Two names stand out above all others on the roll of South New Zealand explorers who have drawn the veil of mystery from the Dominion's most rugged and formidable region, the Fiordland National Park, home of the torrents and the crags, mighty waterfalls, profound canyons, and all but impenetrable forests. This summer has seen more travellers than for many years past gazing in wonder at the mile-high granite walls of Milford Sound, and tramping along the famous overland route between Lake Te Anau and the coast. With that strange, savagely beaujpgul land the names of Donald Sutherland and Quinton McKinnon are imperishably linked. Each was essentially a lone-handed explorer. Sometimes in their trail-blazing they had the company of others, but they did not require the backing of human society; the solitary life had no terrors for them, even in that land of tremendous, overpowering landscapes and vast difficulty of travel.

It is close on thirty years since I first met Donald Sutherland, in his home at the head of Milford Sound, on the spot where he had pitched his tent in 1876. He was a type that fitted that unconquerable dour country, his native Highlands on a far grander scale. A big, gruff, hard man, who had been sailor, soldier, bush-scout, gold-digger, for many years before he came to an anchor for good in the towering gloom of Milford Sound, to enjoy what he described as “the quiet life.” Most people would call it anything but enjoyment, set down there with dog and tent and gun and a few stores, in that terrific solitude. But Sutherland was no ordinary man.