Page 200 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

pistols, a silver mounted dagger and a Mameluke sabre swung
over one shoulder. The main bazaar was crowded with people
shopping, gossiping and collecting round the doors of coffee
houses listening to story-tellers. ‘The Chaus was forced to apply
his cane right and left to the shoulders of those who impeded us’,
which today, probably in Basra, most certainly in Bahrain, would
cause an action for assault.
There being no more trouble up the river, Taylor decided to
pay a visit to Bushire as the Eden was returning there. They
reached Bushire on the last day of March, and Loch heard of the
disaster which had befallen the Company’s ship Ariel. She
foundered at night off Bushire, so near to the coast that had it been
daylight, many of the crew would probably have been saved.
She met a strong shamaal - north-cast wind - which increased
into a gale. ‘The vessel was put under easy and low sail, the top
sails close reef’d, and her head laid to northward. In the middle
of the night, the wind suddenly chopped round from N.E. taking
the Ariel aback. Mountainous seas washed over the vessel’s stern
which immediate swamped her.’ She carried a crew of about
eighty officers and men, including Indian seamen. Only the
Scrang and two lascar sailors were saved; they had managed to
cling to some spars and a hen coop, and were picked up by an
Arab sailing boat.
During this visit Loch went for another expedition inland, over
much of the country which he had seen before, but it presented a
very different appearance. The whole area had been ravaged by
locusts, and every green thing growing had been devoured. At
Bushire it seemed to be the season for flics, and for birds which
Loch calls swallows, but which from his description of them were
fly-catchers. Flies were so bad that ‘it became difficult to open
your eyes or mouth without their being half filled by them.
Flics, dirt and dust were the cause of there being so many eye
diseases among the Bushiris. It was unusual to see a man with
two sound eyes, though the women, Loch says, were not so much
affected as most of them wore veils, which kept away the flics.
Eye diseases used to be very prevalent in the Persian Gulf towns;
in Bahrain, a family of four brothers, wealthy merchants, had
five eyes between them. Today in the states where there are
hospitals and medical services, there are few signs of eye diseases
among the younger Arabs.
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