GORDON COLLEGE AND THE WELLCOME LABORATORIES
Away up the Nile valley, so far from the Mediterranean that it took me
four days by steamship and railroad to reach it, almost within a stone’s
throw of where whole tribes are going naked, and near the site of what
was one of the slave centres of Africa, the English have built up a
school that is turning out native teachers and judges, government clerks
and bookkeepers, mechanics of all sorts, and within certain limits, civil
engineers. It has already several acres of college buildings, including
large dormitories, well equipped classrooms, a library, a museum, and one
of the most remarkable research laboratories of the world.
I refer to Gordon College, which was founded just after the Battle of
Omdurman and named in honour of the great general who was killed in sight
of where it now stands. The idea was suggested by Lord Kitchener, and the
money was contributed by the people of England. The amount raised was
seven hundred thousand dollars, to which has been added the munificent
gift of Mr. Henry S. Wellcome, an American, who has established the
famous Wellcome Laboratory as a part of this institution.
It was through a note of introduction from Sir Reginald Wingate to Dr.
James Currie, the president of the college, that I was taken through it
and given an insight into its workings and possibilities. The institution
stands on the bank of the Blue Nile at the southern end of Khartum,
between the British barracks and the palace of the Sirdar. It is a
handsome structure of dark red brick of Moorish architecture, built
around three sides of a square, with the front facing the river. At the
back are beautiful gardens and an experiment plantation where Dr. Currie
is testing whether tea and certain other shrubs can be successfully grown.
The college building is of two stories with a tower over the centre.
About the inside run wide corridors, or galleries, separated from the
gardens by great columns forming cloisters where the students walk
between their hours of recitation and study. In the wing at the left of
the entrance are the laboratories, museum, and libraries, while in the
front and in the wing at the right are the many classrooms which, during
my stay, were filled with students.
After I had chatted for a time with Dr. Currie about the college we
took a walk through it, visiting the various rooms. I found the college
has something like three hundred students, ranging in age from ten to
eighteen years and over. The students come from every part of the Sudan.
They are of all colours, some having faces as white as our own, while
others are the deepest and shiniest of stove-black. Many of them bear
gashes and scars, denoting the tribe to which they belong, so that could
we read the “trade-marks” we should find that their homes are located in
all parts of the regions tapped by the Blue and White Niles. I saw some
who came from the province of the Bahr el Ghazal, far up on the edge
of the Belgian Congo. Others were from villages in Fashoda, near the
River Sobat, while yet others came from the borders of Abyssinia and
from the regions along the Red Sea. Quite a number were the sons of the
richer chiefs of Kordofan and Darfur, and not a few came from Dongola
and Berber. Some of the boys were dressed in the fezzes and gowns of
Egypt, others wore the white turbans and long robes of the people of
Central Africa. Among them were Coptic and Mohammedan Egyptians, some few
Bedouins, and here and there a Negro.
Many of the students have features like ours. Their noses are straight,
their lips are thin, and their hair is not kinky, although they are
black. Such boys are not Negroes, but the descendants of people from
Arabia. Their ancestors had reached a high degree of civilization during
the Middle Ages when the Arabic schools and universities were noted over
the world.
The college is divided into three departments. The first, which is for
the sons of sheiks, is devoted to the training of teachers for the
Mohammedan schools and of judges and other officials for the Mohammedan
courts. Following their usual colonial policy, the British are governing
the Sudan as far as possible through the natives. They respect the native
religions and the native language, therefore the instruction in this part
of the college is altogether in Arabic. The students write all their
exercises in Arabic and take their dictation in that tongue. Along with
other subjects the students are taught the Koran and the Koranic law—and
they are well grounded in the Mohammedan religion, especially as it bears
upon the government of the people. The students of this department are
fine-looking fellows, dressed almost uniformly in turbans and gowns, and
have the aristocratic bearing which shows them to be the sons of chiefs.
The second department of the college is filled by those who hope to get
minor appointments under the government or who want a general education
to fit themselves for business and citizenship. In this department
both English and Arabic are taught. Many of the boys are young. In one
classroom I found a score of brown- and black-faced pupils, none of them
over twelve years of age, learning to write English. They stood up as I
entered in company with the president of the college, and rose to their
feet again as we left. In this college surveying is taught. I was shown
some excellent mechanical drawings, and some plans worked up from field
notes. These were, of course, in the higher classes. The education is
thorough and a boy can get a training that will fit him for almost any
branch of life and for any profession which can be followed in the Sudan.
I was especially interested in the manual-training school, which is well
equipped, with blacksmith and carpenter shops. I found a score or so of
young Arabs making various things of wrought iron. They were turning out
fences and ornamental iron gates. In the carpenter shops they were making
library cases and other furniture and learning about house building
and finishing. There are also machine shops where the students work at
lathes. Every workshop is under the charge of an English professor who
is a practical mechanic, and the boys are given such instruction that as
soon as they are graduated they can find places on the plantations of the
Sudan. Indeed, the demand for such workers is far in excess of the supply.
The natives of the Sudan are illiterate. The Mahdi and the Khalifa
discouraged learning of all kinds, because they knew that the educated
people would repudiate the doctrines upon which their government was
founded. During his rule over the Sudan the Khalifa ordered that all
books should be destroyed. He had no schools worthy of the name, and as
a result not one Sudanese in a hundred can read and write. The officials
say it is useless to post up government proclamations unless they station
a man beside each one to read it out to the passers-by. At the same time
the natives respect learning. They think that anything written must be
true, so that swindlers sometimes go about and extort money by showing
documents which they claim are orders to pay issued by the government.
The British are doing all they can to change these conditions. They are
trying to educate the people, and are gradually establishing higher
primary schools. Most of the schools are connected with the mosques and
teach little more than reading and writing. The others give the rudiments
of an education along western lines, while the higher primary schools
teach English, mathematics, drawing, and other branches as well.
I went through a higher primary school with the Egyptian governor of
Omdurman. It consisted of many one-story structures built around a
walled inclosure. Each building is a schoolroom. The boys study at desks
just like those used by our schoolboys at home, and have the same kind
of modern classroom equipment. The students are of all ages, from boys
of six learning to read to young men of eighteen or twenty ready to
graduate. I heard some of the latter recite in English, and they seemed
to me quite as bright as our boys at home. In one room I heard the
recitation of the scene from “William Tell,” in which Gessler makes the
Swiss hero shoot the apple from his boy’s head. Four black boys took
part in the dialogue. They declaimed in English, and although they had
an Arabic accent they recited with wonderful feeling and with a full
appreciation of the sentiment of the story. In another building I met
some of the sons of the sheiks and photographed them out in the open. The
pupils of all the schools are polite, and their natural ability is much
above that of the African natives who live farther south.
But to return to the Wellcome Laboratory. Mr. Henry S. Wellcome is a
rich Philadelphian, a member of the famous firm of Burroughs & Wellcome,
manufacturing chemists and druggists of London. This firm makes a special
study of tropical diseases and tropical medicines. A part of its business
is outfitting missionaries and exploring parties. It furnished to Henry
M. Stanley and others their medical supplies for travel throughout
the world. It was probably through the study of such matters that Mr.
Wellcome became interested in the Sudan and was induced to furnish,
equip, and sustain this great laboratory. The objects of the institution
are to promote the study of tropical disorders, especially those of man
and beast peculiar to the Sudan, as well as to render assistance to the
health officers and the civil and military hospitals. The laboratory
experts are carrying on investigations regarding the poisons used by the
natives and the chemical and bacteriological condition of the waters.
They are also making studies of foodstuffs and sanitary improvements.
They are testing and assaying the various minerals and are looking up all
matters relating to the industrial development of the country.
The main offices of the laboratory are in the college, but its explorers
are sent out in every direction to make all sorts of researches. They
are studying the mosquitoes of the country and are investigating the
tsetse fly and other pests. Among other evils they are fighting the
sleeping sickness, that horrible disease communicated by the tsetse
fly which has killed its thousands throughout Central Africa. They are
trying to rout the boll weevil and other insects which ruin the crops,
and they are aiding the Cancer Research Fund and the Carnegie Institute
in their inquiries. I have met a number of the scientists connected
with this institution and I find them able men. They tell me that the
Sudan has almost every noxious insect and pest known to man. It has
worms and weevils which affect the cotton crop, and it has mosquitoes
which carry malaria and which would carry yellow-fever if they were once
inoculated by feeding upon a yellow-fever patient. Indeed, the stegomyia,
or yellow-fever mosquito, swarms here, and if one of them should be
impregnated with these disease germs it might start an endless chain of
the scourge which could hardly be broken.
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.