Page 48 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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Christians you would he naked and you would have none of the
products of civilization."7^ It was a skillfully-worded

attack, and the crowd which had rapidly gathered to witness

the confrontation was completely won over to "the Christian"

side. By Allah, what the foreigner says is most patently

true!

ft Zwemer had also created quite a stir when he intro­

duced the first public clock to Bahrein in 1906. The clock,

which he and Dr. Mylrea had ordered from Hamburg for forty
!
pounds, was mounted on the new square church tower and

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regularly attracted a crowd to the church to hear the clock
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strike the hour or the half hour.'' Mylrea himself created

a similar stir in Kuwait when he built the first hospital
i
■!
in Kuwait, for he imported Portland cement, steel girders

and numerous panes of glass to construct it with - unheard

m of building materials in Kuwait in those days, 78 More

symbolically perhaps, it was the Mission which had introduced

the first automobile to Kuwait in 1921 (12 years before oil

was discovered in the Gulf).7^ Dr. Mylrea had purchased a

horse in 1916 to make house calls and his midnight rides

through the town with his black bag had soon provided great

material for local gossip. When he replaced his horse five

years later with a Model-T Ford, the gossip grew to legend!

Nor was it only to the lower classes of Kuwait that the

missionaries introduced western machines and gadgets. Zahra

Freeth, in her recent' history of Kuwaitj relates how the

Calverlejrs and the British Political Resident helped and

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