air. The guards had not taken two steps on their
beat before the sand was littered with sleepers that looked like dead
men. These sleeping columns, some ninety to a hundred miles from the
coast, were now half way to Windhuk.

[Illustration: The Great Trek. An extempore bath towards the end of the
Trek]

Two hours after daylight General Headquarters moved to a camping ground
two miles back towards Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis), and rested during the
day in the shade of the scant trees with which the veld was covered as
the desert was left behind. The rest of the Northern Army had trekked on
with scarcely any pause. Shortly before sunset, the Commander-in-Chief
set out on a night march of twenty odd miles to Otjimbingwe. The trek
was done at a fierce pace till midnight, when an outspan was ordered;
the party slept for four hours, and made Otjimbingwe just as the dawn of
the 1st of May was breaking. As General Botha rode into this old mission
settlement the rear of the German forces, closely pursued, was galloping
in retreat over the kopjes to the east. Many prisoners were taken here.
General Botha spent the day at Otjimbingwe, left at dawn on the 2nd, and
trekked north-west seventeen miles to Pot Mine, which he reached at 12.45
p.m. Here the Commander-in-Chief awaited the arrival of General Smuts,
had a conference with him, and moved in force on Karibib at 2 a.m. on the
5th of May. He trekked the whole of that day, with two halts of an hour
each, and entered Karibib on the heels of the enemy at five o'clock in
the afternoon. At the same time the rest of the Northern Force had
entered Okasise, Okahandja, Waldau, and other stations on the railway,
had captured the whole system practically up to Omaruru, and were at the
gates of Windhuk. The German forces were in full retreat to the north and
north-east. Their civilian populations, left behind in the towns, seemed
dumfoundered at the appearance of the Union troops. Meantime the Southern
and Central Armies had approached the German capital on the southern
flank.

This account of the advance through the desert of General Botha's
Northern Force is purposely bald. The process of a vast flooding of
water over a country is in essence bald and direct. And that is as near
as I can get for comparison. General Botha's advance was like a
well-ordered flood: which, I take it, was exactly the idea. At a fixed
time organised bodies of men, mounted, dismounted and with artillery,
were system