In another direction also an encouraging start has been made. There is at present in the Soudan no skilled native labour; blacksmiths, tinsmiths, carpenters, and bricklayers, are all in demand, and have to be imported from outside at great trouble and expense. In the hope of meeting this demand, an industrial school has been established at the Dockyard Works, which are now on the river at Omdurman, but which will eventually be moved to Halfaya. The head of the Steamboat Department agreed to take in sixty boys as apprentices. These are divided into two shifts of thirty each, and they alternately receive a day’s schooling and do a day’s practical work at their separate trades as carpenters, fitters, or riveters. In school their time is divided between reading, writing, and arithmetic, and also drawing. The plan has been found to answer admirably. Not only does the education they receive improve their intelligence as workers, but some of the boys have shown such proficiency in drawing that they are able to copy engineering and building designs with such accuracy as to be able to relieve the English superintendents of a good deal of work. Many of these boys are sons of men employed in unskilled labour at the works, who take the greatest interest in seeing their sons advance so far beyond themselves. Many applications for admission have to be refused, and there is little doubt that when Sir W. Mather’s technical school at the Gordon College is in full swing, it will fill a great need in the requirements of the country.