]
In the strenuous days of the Boer War I learned to know my South Africa
from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean as one learns a country only under
the searching test of war. I came to know the unfrequented paths, the
trackless parts of the bush, the wastes where people do not often go. I
believe it is generally admitted that I covered more country than any
other commander in the field on either side--and my movement was not
always in the direction of the enemy!
[Sidenote: Obtaining water on the Kalahari Desert.]
When the present war broke out, I proceeded once more on my extensive
travels, and I became something of an expert in the waterless, sandy
wastes of the southern half of German Southwest Africa. As for the
Kalahari Desert, over which the movement of men and transport was
supposed to be quite impossible, we did not rest until we had sunk
bore-holes for water for hundreds of miles, and until we had moved a
large force of thousands of mounted men across an area in which it was
thought no human being could ever move. One of the reasons of our
success in that campaign was that, moving through the Kalahari Desert,
we struck the enemy country at its very heart. The travels of
Livingstone, of Selous, who was a comrade of mine in this war, and of
other illustrious men in those vast solitudes of southern Africa were as
joy-rides to what we had to undergo in conducting a big campaign against
the enemy, and still more against nature.
[Sidenote: A campaign in East Africa.
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