In each of the workshops an English teacher who is a practical mechanic gives the boys such instruction that on graduation they immediately find places on the plantations where the demand for them is in excess of the supply.
Immediately after the death of Gordon, generous contributions were collected by Kitchener for the Gordon Memorial College at Khartum. Here Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, and Sudanese are taught the three R’s and the useful arts.
From one year’s end to another the harbour of Port Said, at the north end of the Suez Canal is filled with the world’s shipping and travellers of all nations crowd its docks.
In closing this chapter I should like to add my tribute to the many well-deserved eulogies accorded Mr. Henry S. Wellcome. The value of the work already done is so great that it cannot be estimated, and every American should be proud of the fact that the founder of this institution was born in the United States, and that, although the greater part of his time is spent in connection with his great factories in London, he has remained an American citizen.
CHAPTER XXV
THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL
Bring your steamer chair to the rail and look out from the deck of our ship over the Red Sea as we sail southward along the coast of East Africa. The sun is hot but we have an awning above us, and the salt breeze cools our cheeks. We have returned by rail and by river from Khartum to Cairo, have gone over the Nile delta to Port Said, have passed through the Suez Canal, and have sailed south into the Red Sea. We are now off the coast of Arabia, on our way into the Indian Ocean, bound for the port of Mombasa, whence we shall go across a mighty plateau to the great African lakes. Mombasa is within a rifle shot of the Equator and only a few miles north of Zanzibar. It is at the southeastern end of Kenya Colony and is the terminus of the Uganda Railway which crosses that country to Kisumu, the chief port of Lake Victoria.