Coll 30/200 ‘Persian Gulf. Tour of Political Resident from Bahrein to Muscat in L. T. Nearchus.’ [‎15r] (30/133)

*
the Danes ro«y have fifth-column short-wave wireleee transmitting
sets but these can only be detected by the Service authorities
themselves. There are no Suropean women in Bandar Abbas*
and the Danes* families are in Tehran. The factory An East India Company trading post. itself
is remarkably efficient* and it was interesting to see the
tins being built up from the raw tinplate* and the fish being
prepared end cooked for their receptacles. The tinning plant
involves a large number of extremely sharp shears operating
at a high rate of speed which are entirely unprotected* in
fact there can be few factories with so much unguarded
machineiy lying in wait for the fingers of the employees.
The Danes however aseured me that no accidents had taken place.
Curiously enough it is difficult to purchase the tinned fish
locally as it is all exported to the north. The fishing
vessel* Sang Bar, which had recently been returned by the Navy*
had not yet arrived.
4. 1 then visited new aerodrome which was at that
moment being developed by the K.A.F. Anti locust Flight* and
pasted the area in which the rubber growing plant* guforbia
larica* grows wild. The widespread growth of this plant has
be. a reported and samples have been sent to the tf.S.ii.c:.
Ur. Rogers took me part of Ihe way in his oar, and ws completed
the router portion of the journey in a Jeep belonging to the
locust party. The latter part of the road was appalling* in
fact on our return we stuck in a stony river bed and only
extricated ourselves with the help of some local inhabitants.
Kr. Rogers went to Minab last Spring along this track in his
own oar* this being a very serious risk for a new vehicle*
but brought it back to Bandar Abbas by dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. . I feel lhat
officers in these out of the way places should not be compelled
to risk valuable passenger oars under such circumstances*
which they cannot replace exftept at fantastic prices, and that
Service vehicles should be provided fbr them instead. At
the aerodrome I found some officers of the South African Air
Force who were enthusiastic about the newly discovered aero
drome tfiioh has an entirely natural surface and runways of
ov^r 1400 yards in length with flat approaches. Ur. Lean
pointed out some locust droppings to me idiich showed that the
area had been heavily frequented in the past year. He doubted
whether the Invasion would mature on the scale which had been
anticipated but was naturally relaxing no precautions. I
enquired from him whether the seal of the ubiquitous Russians
was entirely inspired by an Interest In locusts* or whether
they had other objects as well. He replied that he thought
that the interest was equally divided between the locusts and
reconnaissances of a wider nature. It is interesting to
speculate what reply we should get if the Government of India
proposed to send locust parties to the Russian frontier.
5. The Trans Jordan Frontier Force was due to arrive
that afternoon and a site for their camp had been selected
by Mr. Rogers and the Locust Officer. I had seen a dump of
their etores at the jetty. The intimation of the ship *8
arrival only came the same night that it arrived* there was
no announcement that the ship was bringing a party to guard
the stores* and no intimation whatever regarding the officer
In charge of them. Mr. Rogers had some difficulty in
persuading the Sue tome authorities to allow them to take charge
of an area outside the Customs and keep their goods there.
The officer in charge of the stores had no authority to select