Swakopmund was left on the 26th of April at dawn.  Haigkamchab was reached by I on the same afternoon, and Husab supply base at 6.30 p.m.  Next day Husab was left at 2.15 p.m.; the column halted for a few minutes at 5 p.m., and pushed right through to Riet, which was made at 10.20 that evening.  Headquarters rested all day on the 28th at Riet, left it at 8 p.m., trekked by moonlight along the Swakop River for three hours, outspanned till an hour before dawn, and made Salem at 6.45 a.m. on March 29.  At 9.30 that morning the column moved on again, reached outspan at twenty miles by 1.35 in the afternoon, rested for an hour and a half and pushed on again till a quarter before midnight, when it rode into Wilhelmsfeste.  But the water was at Kaltenhausen, some miles further ahead of this military post.  We reached it at 1.15 on the morning of the 30th.  Animals took two hours to water in the bitterly cold morning 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.