EASTERN SHEIK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 171, 21 July 1936, Page 8

EASTERN SHEIK.

ARRIVAL IN LONDON. GOLDEN SWORD AND .SCABBARD. LONDON, June 19; Sheik Sir Hamad Bin Isa A 1 Khalifa, of Bahrein, headquarters of the Persian pearl trade, gripped his gold-handled sword in its solid gold scabbard vr.'th a firm brown hand. Then, with a certain amount of trepidati'on, he stepped on the gangway of the Channel steamer Biarritz, which had brought him to England. Wearing the imposing robes and headdress of a sheik, he walked unsteadily ashore at Folkestone and set his feet with some relief on British soil. Though fascinated by Western civilisation, the sheik has not been able to overcome a certain native caution when getting off boats or boarding trains. He. approaches them as a Cockney would a bad-tempered camel. Pose for Cinema. The slieik, his two sons and his suite had no fears of the imposing-apparatus of a cinema van which awaited them on the quay. The sheik posed for the cameraman, aiul was even persuaded to speak a message in Arabic into the microphone. Sheik Hamad has come to England to be invested by the King with the K.C.I.E. which was conferred on him in the 1935 New Year honours list. He rules over 100,000 people, mostly pearl fishers and tillers of the soil, who inhabit the two islands of Manamah and Muharraq, in the Persian Gulf. Oil, which has been discovered on Manamah, lias made the sheik's territory of great monetary and strategic value. On the journey to London the sheik, through his adviser and interpreter, Mr. C. Dalrymple Belgrave, said: "I am delighted to be in England again. I have very pleasant recollections of my previous visit when I was deputyruler." Two\ tilings he is very much looking forward to are a visit to Madame Tussatids and a visit to the Zoo. Mr. Belgrave said: "The sheik wants to go to Madame Tussauds to see famous men he has heard of as thev were in life. And he wants to see especially in the Zoo a Bahrein fox they have there."