With Botha in the Field

by Eric Moore Ritchie

The Last Phase. Conference at Omaruru. German Staff lunching

The General receives his Bodyguard at a Garden Party after return

The marvellous series of changes as one advances constitutes the most striking feature of the advance to Windhuk from the coast. By rail it is not so striking; but taking the marching route via the Swakop River water-holes--Swakopmund, Nonidas, Haigamkhab, Husab, Riet, Salem, Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis), Otjimbingwe, Windhuk--the changes in the country and the stages that show them are as palpable as if marked by a system of parallel walls. I have never seen this feature of the veld so marked elsewhere in South Africa.

Swakopmund is the limit in the down-grade-- deep sand; brak water; a treacherous, dreary climate, with visitations of furnace-heat desert winds; a huge cemetery; moths and flies. From Nonidas to Haigamkhab and Husab the sand lightens and hardens, the atmosphere improves, rocks, barren kopjes begin to appear; the little water you get is fairly good. Riet comes; the barren kopjes are more frequent; the atmosphere, hot in the day, is beautiful by night; the water is perfect. Salem is a duplicate Riet; a small settlement in the river bed; but the water is more plentiful, the vegetation more profuse. Then comes the great trek to Tsaobis.

It does not look far on the map; it is a huge stretch nevertheless. For the first three hours it was Riet-Salem country with extensions and additions. Vast gorges, black and brown kopjes, boulders, sand stretches, clumps of bush, minute trees. And then, on Thursday the 29th of April (memory holds the date like a vice), we saw grass. It was grass. It was undoubtedly grass--the kind of grass that gave one the feeling that this particular veld, like a man prematurely bald through worry or riotous living, had been trying some hair restorer with ludicrous results--grass whitish, feeble, attenuated, that to be seen at all wanted an eye levelled along the ground.

Each half hour brought its surprise as we moved along, General Botha on his white horse at the head of the column, just visible to the eye through the thick curtain of white dust our horses' feet flung up into the sun glare. We rode in great gorges between kopjes. We crossed dry river courses. We clattered over the hard bosoms of rocks, switchbacked up and down each hour working out of the desert. Trees began to appear--caricatures of trees. Then game spoor was reported. And suddenly, just after noon, rain fell--out of one cloud in a sky otherwise brazenly clear five drops fell. I counted five on my bridle hand.

Rain on the edge of the Namib Desert. It was ludicrous, too bizarre; it was the last straw. We gasped. A deep roar of ironical cheering went up. The Commander-in-Chief looked round and laughed. When we outspanned later the horses made a show of grazing for the first time for five months. The sagacious animals showed plain amazement in their eyes. At Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis) the bushveld begins. The water supply of Otjimbingwe is the feature of that rather quaint settlement. One must ever associate it with its fine aeromotor pumping the precious fluid for parched man and beast to drink their full after the desert passage in the shade of cool palms many years old.