Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/102

 40 THE OIL-FIELDS AND THE FIRE-TEMPLE OF BAKU

��truncated pyramids, each in itself a source of revenue that is a fortune. 1 The stupendous figures of the annual yield from these fields is almost staggering. It runs up into the many millions of 'poods,' a pood being approximately five American gallons.^ Sometimes the borings strike 'fountains,' and then a tremendous ' spouter ' is the result, belching up its concealed contents with the force of a geyser, and perhaps bringing ruin instead of fortune to its owner unless the giant can be speedily throttled and gagged. Thrilling descriptions are given of how some of these monsters have, within the last generation, thus wrought destruction to everything within immediate reach. ^ The magnificence of the spectacle is sur- passed only by the awful grandeur when fire adds terror to the scene. On all occasions when visiting the petroleum fields it is advisable to wear old clothes, for one may find it anything but the oil of gladness, as I learned from sad experience when one of the spouters blew off unexpectedly while we were near it, filling the air with a deluging rain from whose greasy downpour there was no escape.

All who have been at Baku, and almost all who have heard of Baku, know of the Fire Temple at Surakhany in the northern environs of the city. The place is easily reached

��1 See Henry, Baku^ pp. vii, 104, and the remarkable statistics given through- out that standard work.

2 Through the kindness of Mr. Wil- son D. Youmans, of Yonkers, N. Y., I have been most courteously furnished, by the statistician of the Standard Oil Company of New York, with the fol- lowing figures regarding Baku : ' Dur- ing the year 1908 the production of the Baku Field was 465,343,000 poods, gallons. The world's production of crude oil during the year 1908 was 284,614,022 barrels of 42 gallons, and the Baku production represented 19.6 % of the total production of the world.

��' The production of the Baku Field annually since 1903 was as follows : —

��1903 ..

�. . 596,581,155 poods

�1904 ..

�. . 614,115,445 poods

�1905 ..

�. . 414,762,000 poods

�1906 ..

�. . 447,520,000 poods

�1907 ..

�. . 476,002,000 poods

�1908 ..

�. . 465,343,000 poods

��' During the year 1908 the production barrels of 42 gallons. The United poods of crude oil = one American barrel of 42 gallons. This is approxi- mately 5 American gallons to 1 pood. '

3 See Henry, Baku, pp. 63-108.

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