LORD "BITENPOLL."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 193, 15 August 1936, Page 11

LORD "BITENPOLL."

A BASUTO'S MEMORY. THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING. DISPATCH CARRIED. JOHANNESBURG, July 3. There is an old native—a member of the famous Basuto tribe —here who is bitterly disappointed because Lord Baden-Powell, the hero of the Siege of Mafeking, has recently visited South, Africa and he didn't know about it. "It all happened long ago when the Boers fought the big war," the old native, Jacob, said to a "Rand Daily! Mail" reporter. He was very old now | but he would sit down and tell the story j of the days when he was a dispatch I ' rider for Lord Baden-Powell —"Biten- j poll," he called him. , It happened in Mafeking. In an office i there just where'the bank is now, three. officers told him that he had to slip! through the Boers surrounding the town j and take a message to Kimberley. j "They gave me special boots," said old I Jacob. "I told them that I could not! walk with these boots on. But they said I that the message was inside the sole of | one boot. I "I put the boots on. I wanted to go.' The big guns were firing at the town, i A shell hit the office. One of the officers : was hit. His head rolled on to the | ground like a pumpkin. "Then Jacob just ran away," exclaimed, the old man. "But I got past the Boer , lines. I took the message to Kimberley I and there the big man took the message j out of my boot. He just swore and said: j 'We can't help them. The Boers are all round us too.' " That is all Jacob remembers about the greatest adventure of his life. He sits now outside the Johannesburg market driving cattle or sheep and running messages. He has one regret—that he did not see "Bitenpoll" during his recent visit. " 'Bitenpoll' would have helped old Jacob, his dispatch rider," lie says. "But Jacob never saw him and now he cannot even get an old age pension."