Discovery of Sutherland Falls.

It was on November 10, 1880, that Donald Sutherland first set eyes on the triple water-leap that bears his name. His were the first human eyes to see this marvel, unless we credit the wandering Ngati-mamoe, the lost tribe of the Sounds, with having wandered up that far from Lake Ada, where their stone-marked camping-places were found by Maoris who came seal-hunting to Milford from Foveaux Strait in the early Seventies. Sutherland was then accompanied by John Mackay; he was travelling ahead, slashing his way through the bush when on rounding a great mountain spur in that tangled garden of the gods he saw the upper part of a waterfall flashing between the trees, dropping from a cloudy alpine wall.

It was not until another expedition was made, some three years later, that the explorer managed to get near the foot of the cataract, and his early estimates of its height were very much astray. It is hard to judge heights in that country of vast dimensions; it was thought at first that it was 4000 or 5000 feet high. Not until 1888 was the exact height of the falls, 1904ft., fixed by a Government survey party sent round from Dunedin. And now comes in the story which links up that plucky explorer Quinton McKinnon with this overland route and Milford Sound.