atically poured over the German territory. I am sure most of
the fellows who took part in that advance and recall it in detail will in
the future look back and wonder. For it is a subject for wonder, even
if history does contain some marches more eventful. It has been stated
since that all transport was left behind. But that is not strictly
true: a large quantity of transport was brought on by the Union Forces;
passed through the deepest sand in waterless desert, between gorges,
over big kopjes, into almost trackless bushveld--and was never more
than a day and a half behind. At one place out of a convoy of
twenty-seven wagons, seventeen capsized.

It is hackneyed, I know, but there is only one way to describe the
great trek to Windhuk. It was absolutely "a chequer-board of nights and
days." Looking at my diary just now, that I have had ten years'
practice at keeping, I see a confusion got into the dates. You didn't
know anything about the date or the day of the week. Existence was just
a dateless alternation of light and darkness, of saddle-up and
off-saddle, of cossack-post, of thinking about water--and of yearning
with every fibre of one's being for the ineffable boon of a long sleep.

It will be seen that the key to the advance over the Namib Desert was
the Swakop River. The water-holes of the Swakop River are very
singular; they form the nucleus of a kind of settlement (even if it be
only a couple of small huts) right in the dry river bed. At
Kaltenhausen, to take but one example, there is a splendid
shooting-lodge slapbang in the centre of the river; it has a fine
courtyard walled and railed in. It seemed extraordinary. At these
water-holes you suddenly leave the stony sand of the desert and come on
to finest soft sand. It is quite pleasant at night, but day tells another
story. Just after sunrise a wind starts blowing down the river valley and
raises this superfine, mineralised sand. To lie exposed to this for a day
is an awful experience; the fine dust will penetrate anywhere. I am sure
it must lead to positive blindness in time.

I mentioned the water-holes of the Swakop River for the particular
reason that their situation in most cases adds immensely to the merit
of the Northern Army's great trek. The trek-road from Swakopmund
follows the river only in a broad sense; the Haigamkhab, Husab and
Gawieb water-holes are really three to four and five miles from the
road and the camping grounds. That is to say, the