DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS 5

Where the European comes in is, of course, in

constructive enterprises, or undertakings involving

large tracts of ground and requiring considerable

capital, and it is in these directions mainly that

occupation for young Europe will open.

Certainly the contemplated supply of water to

the Ghezireh from the Blue Nile will provide

opportunity for cotton - growing on a suitable

scale, though the quality of the product, as at

present placed on the market, requires considerable

improvement. Some classes of rubber-producing

trees are native to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and the

fitness of its conditions for the varieties generally

favoured is now being tested.

Still, the education of the natives proceeds apace

;

while the Greeks—merchants, speculators and con-

tractors—are omnipresent and make the country

their home, so that the field for Europeans proper

will more or less follow the lines of that of Egypt,

though under more trying conditions.

Year by year, under the fostering care of the

British Mudirs, production increases and methods

improve, and in due course—though "hustle" is unknown in the Sudan—it will take rank as a

highly important source of supply.

It has often been charged as a shortcoming of

Great Britain that her traders insufficiently study

their markets, so can it be wondered at that the

careless Sudani, who for thousands of years have

been content with primitive appliances and in-

souciant inexactness, find difficulty in appreciating