A CYCLIST IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 165, 24 July 1901, Page 3

A CYCLIST IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Lieutenant Wynyard Joss, once wellknown as a cyclist in Christchurch, is . winning more renown in South Africa than fell to him on the racing track. He j is in charge of the Queensland Cycling Corps attached to General Plumer’s j column, and the war correspondent of one of the London papers speaks with extraordinary enthusiasm of' his pluck and energy. “Wonderful fellows,” he says, these cyclists are, “under a marvellous leader, Lieutenant 'VV’ynyard Joss, who when not cycling aver impossible tracks afid Careering for three-score miles in a day, devotes his leisure to trapping insects and reptiles, not the smaller class but gigantic locusts, grasshoppers, with beetles, and tarantulas ns big as cricket balls.” Lieutenant Joss made the discovery that baboons are very fond o[ tarantulas’, arid as the latter' ate 'calculated to fill the average man with loathing and horror, it must have afforded a good many men a certain amount of gratification to watoh the baboons tear the huge spiders’ hairy legs aff and devour the body as a great dajnty, Mr Bennett Burleigh says he has seen this soldier-cyclist with a pet chameleon on his wideawake, a tame tortoise on a string, and a stock of dead and live snakes stored away upon his person or in his cart. “ These cyclists of his,” adds Mr Burleigh, “ used to carrydespatches daily be(wgen Plumeria camp and the thirty-five miles distant post of Commissie Drift, Never had the writer seen such a body of determined trundlers as those who followed Plumeria column from Pretoria to Pietersburg, and back. Sand, rocks, boulders, scrub, veldt, they tried them all, bucking at no obstacles, from kopjes to rivers. In the wild impossible trackless country they achieved marvels, About twenty bicycles and their tattered and torn riders survived the road encounters. Day by day men upon cycles wilted, succumbed, disappeared from the track —yea, even from the towpaths behind carts.” Some of the cyclists, it appears, wpre not filled With the'same joy'of cycling over South Africa as their leader, and have been known to let their machines fall in front of an ox-waggon, survey the ruin with cheerful equanimity, and the remark' “Thank goodness that i bike’s done for ever,’.’ and then trudge happily behind jhe CQpvoy. Lieutenant Jp'ss has received'praise from his superior [ officers for feats which were probably attended with uwrq danger than he Sidtai^v