NOTED EXPLORER

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 256, 26 September 1935, Page 8

NOTED EXPLORER

VISIT BY DR THOMAS

DISCOVERIES IN ARABIA

WELLINGTON, Sept,. 26

“The whole history of the human race may be explained by the history of Arabia. I don’t think Arabia has any industrial or commercial future, but it will remain a reservoir for men. It is still one of those dormant human volcanoes 'which occasionally erupt.” The speaker was the noted Arabian explorer and Orientalist, Dr Bertram Sidney Thomas, 0.8. E., Ph. D. (Cambridge), Hon.D.Litt. (Bristol), Hon. D.Sc. (University of Acadia, Nova Scotia), who as “Mr B. Thomas,” travelling second class, arrived at W ellington by the Wanganellii from Sydney yesterday, accompanied by lus wife. „„ In the winter of 1930-31, Dr Thomas performed what, the Times described at the time in a leading article as the greatest feat of exploration in modern times. He crossed the great “South Arabian Desert,” a journey of over 800 miles, on camelback through the unknown. He did it as a lone European with no companions but the wild and unusually hostile natives—denizens of the desert. He did it at his own time and expense, unaided by funds or grants from any organisation. For four months lie explored at great personal risk of death from violence or thirst, and so achieved the first crossing ot this desert by a white man, and fulfilled an ambition that both Sir Richard Burton, the translator of the “Arabian Nights,” and the late Colonel T. E. Lawrence of Arabia had themselves cherished. This journey had to be done in secret, Mr Thomas dressing and living as an Arab nomad. Besides mapping an area as big as New Zealand during this and three previous journeys in and about this virgin desert—a name of terror to the Arabs throughout Arabia and the last considerable part of the earth’s surface to remain unknown —many valuable scientific discoveries were made. New tribes were found of a different racial origin from the Arabs, four new Semitic languages were recorded, and some thirty new forms of animal life were discovered. Dr Thomas knew the late Colonel Lawrence. “His deatli was the passing of a very great figure from the Arabian stage,” he told a reporter in an interview. He had not been in contact with Colonel Lawrence a great deal, but Lawrence had sent his congratulations when he crossed the South Arabian Desert. To do that had been Lawrence’s ambition, too. Dr Thomas recently had a distinction conferred on him when he was invited by the University of Harvard to deliver the Lowell Lectures there this year. From America Dr Thomas went to China, and was in Pekin at the time, about three months ago, when, to put it in his own words, “some disgruntled soldiers started shelling the place.” They had, apparently, received no pay ior six months. Dr Thomas crossed China from east to west, a. FuOO-mile journey, and went up the Yangtse Valley shortly alter floods had drowned 250,000 Chinese. But that was a very small number in a valley in which there lived one in ten of the human race. Dr Thomas then went on to Australia and gave lectures in Sydney, and will lecture in Melbourne cm his return. In a short reference to his great feat, Dr Thomas said that no man went to Arabia without dressing as the Arabs did. “I admired their camels and grew a beard. The Arabs swear by their beards.” Df Thomas, born in 1892, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was research student and fellow commoner of Trinity and prseident of the Cambridge University Anthropological Club. He was in the Home Civil Service from 1908 to 1914, served from 1914 to 1915 in the ranks of the North Somerset Yeomanry in Belgium, and in the Somerset Light Infantry in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1918. He was political officer in Mesopotamia 1918 to 1922, assistant British representative in Trans-Jordania from 1922 to 1924, and Vizier and Finance Minister to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, 1925 to 1930. The leading geographical societies of the world have conferred on him their highest honours, including the following gold medals:— The King’s Medal of the Royal Geography a 1 Society of England, the Livingstone Medal of the lloyal Geographical Society of Scotland, the Cullum Medal of the American Geographical Society of New York, the Gold Medal of the Belgian Royal Geographical Society of Antwerp, the Burton Memorial Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Dr Thomas is one of the world’s leading authorities on Arabia and has written two hooks, “Arabia Felix,” to which Colonel Lawrence contributed a preface, and “Alarms and Excursions in Arabia.” In 1928 he received the Grand Cordon Order of A 1 Said Muscat Oman.