MISSING SCHOOLTEACHER.

Wairarapa Age, 5 March 1927, Page 5

MISSING SCHOOLTEACHER.

ASTRAY IN RUGGED BENMORE COUNTRY. LITTLE HOPE OF RECOVERY. Blenheim, March 4. Practically all hop© of finding Eric Lee Palmer, a young schoolteacher, who has been missing in the Benmore country since Sunday last, has now been abandoned. The search was kept up all day yesterday and a small party, including the unfortunate young man’s father, was out to-day, but it is understood that unless the missing man is located by this evening the search will be relinquished?

There seems little doubt that Palmer, after leaving his companions, attempted to penetrate into the country known as “No Man’s Land,” at the back of Benmore. This is steep precipitious. country, characterised in many places by sheer precipices 300 and 400 feet in height and containing many enormous shingle slips. An attempt to cross some of these slips is fatal, as the shingle, once set on the move, would almost inevitably bury the adventurer. It is feared that Palmer has probably been carried down in one of these slips. In any case, the country in the vicinity is so rugged and broken that it is almost impossible to traverse it, and the searchers’ task would be superhuman and almost certainly foredoomed to failure, as it would be quite possible to be within feet of the missing man and never see him.—(P.A.)