Page 208 - Records of Bahrain (4) (i)_Neat

196 Records of Bahrain

been cleaned up and repaired and are kept clean, bo that
from being one of the dlrtie8t town in this part of
the world, it 1b now one of the cleanest. Several of
the main 6treet6 have been widened and corners cut off and
improvements nw.de so that motors can p&6s through them,
shop platforms and other obstructions which enc^/rached on
the road having been removed. One can even drive comfortably
in a car through the town gw from the Agency to the Custom
House, Joint Court room etc, or thjpugh the town by another
road to the Portuguese fort or towards Budaiya. If it had
not been for the obstructive attitude of Shaikh Isa a scheme
of bringing water and electric light to the Town would have
been well under way. A dirty little village of irat huts
just behind the Town near the American Mission has been
removed to a good site between the Wireless Station
and the Quarantine Station, and the shallow borrow pits breed­
ing myriads of mosquitoes have been drained and are being
filled up. The old village was the source of nearly all the
epidemics in Bahrain of recent years, The new village
although named "Zulmabad" (as is one close to Bush ire Town)
is a neat llttlejple.ee with good date palm and rush houses
and wide streets - the transplanted inhabitants having each
been given a grant with which they build a new home, This is
a great improvement which has appreciably diminished the
number of mosquitoes in the Southern and Eastern parts of
Manama. The space between the Agency and the American
Mission which was open desert when I was at Bahrain (and
long after), except for one house belonging to Haji
Mukbil a Nejdi pearl merchant, is now covered with fine
houses belonging to well-to-do Arabs and Persians with
good roads betv/een. My recent visits to Bahrain having
been rather short and taken up exclusively with interviews
and receiving petitions from Baharnah etc. etc. I had not
till this occasion had much chance of seeing the outskirts of
the Town and the Interior of the Island. On this occasion I
hardly
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