The chemists here tell me that one of the principal money crops of this part of the world is gum arabic. We know this gum chiefly in connection with mucilage, but it is also widely used in the arts. It is employed for making water colours and certain kinds of inks as well as in dyeing and finishing silks and other fabrics. Some of the better grades are used in confectionery, and the pearly teeth of many an American girl have done their work in the chewing of this exudation of the trees of the Sudan. The gum, which comes from the acacia tree, is said to be due to a microbe which feeds upon the sap and causes the gum to ooze out on the bark in the form of tears when the bark is cut or partially stripped. It is collected by the native women and packed up and shipped to Omdurman for sale and export. During my visit to the markets of that city I saw great piles of it which had been brought in to be sent down the Nile or over the railroad to the Red Sea. There were hundreds of tons of it lying out in the open, and I was told that within a few weeks it would all be on its way to Europe or the United States. [Illustration: 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.] [Illustration: 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.] [Illustration: 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