GORDON COLLEGE AND THE LABORATORIES The second department of the college is filled by those who hope to get minor appointments under the govern¬ ment or who want a general education to fit themselves for business and citizenship. In this department both English and Arabic are taught. Many of the boys are young. In one classroom I found a score of brown- and black-faced pupils, none of them over twelve years of age, learning to write English. They stood up as I entered in company with the president of the college, and rose to their feet again as we left. In this college surveying is taught. I was shown some excellent mechanical drawings, and some plans worked up from field notes. These were, of course, in the higher classes. The education is thorough and a boy can get a training that will fit him for almost any branch of life and for any profession which can be followed in the Sudan.

I was especially interested in the manual-training school, which is well equipped, with blacksmith and carpenter shops. I found a score or so of young Arabs making var¬ ious things of wrought iron. They were turning out fences and ornamental iron gates. In the carpenter shops they were making library cases and other furniture and learn¬ ing about house building and finishing. There are also machine shops where the students work at lathes. Every workshop is under the charge of an English professor who is a practical mechanic, and the boys are given such in¬ struction that as soon as they are graduated they can find places on the plantations of the Sudan. Indeed, the demand for such workers is far in excess of the supply.

The natives of the Sudan are illiterate. The Mahdi and the Khalifa discouraged learning of all kinds, because they knew that the educated people would repudiate the doc-203