CAIRO TO KISUMU trines upon which their government was founded. During his rule over the Sudan the Khalifa ordered that all books should be destroyed. He had no schools worthy of the name, and as a result not one Sudanese in a hundred can read and write. The officials say it is useless to post up government proclamations unless they station a man beside each one to read it out to the passers-by. At the same time the natives respect learning. They think that anything written must be true, so that swindlers sometimes go about and extort money by showing documents which they claim are orders to pay issued by the government.

The British are doing all they can to change these conditions. They are trying to educate the people, and are gradually establishing higher primary schools. Most of the schools are connected with the mosques and teach little more than reading and writing. The others give the rudiments of an education along western lines, while the higher primary schools teach English, mathematics, drawing, and other branches as well.

I went through a higher primary school with the Egyp¬ tian governor of Omdurman. It consisted of many onestory structures built around a walled inclosure. Each building is a schoolroom. The boys study at desks just like those used by our schoolboys at home, and have the same kind of modern classroom equipment. The stu¬ dents are of all ages, from boys of six learning to read to young men of eighteen or twenty ready to graduate.

I heard some of the latter recite in English, and they seemed to me quite as bright as our boys at home.

In one room I heard the recitation of the scene from “William Tell,” in which Gessler makes the Swiss hero shoot the apple from his boy’s head. Four black 204