CAIRO TO KISUMU debt for half a billion dollars to European creditors— English, French, German, and Spanish—and England and France had arranged between them to pull her out. Later France withdrew from the agreement and Great Britain undertook the job alone.

At that time the people were ground down to the earth and had barely enough for mere existence. Taxes were frightfully high and wages pitifully low. The proceeds from the crops went mostly to Turkey and to the bankers of Europe who had obtained the bonds given by the government to foreigners living in Egypt. In fact, they had as hard lives as in the days of the most tyrannical of the Pharaohs.

But since that time the British have had a chance to show what they could do, irrigation projects and railroad schemes have been put through, cotton has come into its own, and I see to-day a far more prosperous land and people than 1 did at the end of the last century.

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