Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/89

 the name of harbours. In the neighbourhood of Backu are many foun- tains of Naphtha ; it is a sort of petroleum, of a brown colour and inflammable nature. The Persians burn it in their lamps; no rain can extinguish it, but the smell is disagreeable. I have seen of it as clear as rock water.'^

The London merchant, traveler, and philanthropist, Jonas Hanway, author of a learned work on the Caspian Sea in the eighteenth century, gives an extended excerpt from the journal of the Scottish physician. Dr. John Cooke, 'relating to the route of the Russian embassy into Persia.' Six days were spent by the embassy in Baku, Feb. 6-12, 1747, and some of the memoranda are well worth quoting here as a description of the city at that date.

' In this city is a sumptuous palace of hewn stone, which the Russian bombs in 1722 [1723] had contributed to reduce to the ruinous state in which we found it. The Persians say, that as the Turks made use of it as a magazine, they will not repair it ; but the truth is, they are in no circumstances to do any such thing. The rebellion of 1743 did not cost less than the lives of 15,000 men to the province and the adjacent country of Shirvan. Formerly many merchants lived here, especially Indians ^ and Armenians, together with several Tartars ; and, in the single branch pounds] ; but now they have scarce any vestiges of commerce. This city is said to have been built by the Turks [?] : the fortification is semicircular, and the two points of it are extended into the sea. It is defended by a double wall, of which the inmost is lofty for a Persian fortification. ... As all the country here is impregnated with salt and

1 Bell, Travels in Asia, ed. Pinker- * Niezbatt ' again on Sept. 4 ; no men- ton, 7. 288, London, 1811. Bell made tion is made of a fire temple at Baku, his camp at 'Niezbatt,' in the vicinity * Niezbatt' (of. op. cit. p. 313) is the of Baku, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 18, same as ' Nizabad or Nizawoy ' on the 1715 (cf. Pinkerton, 7. 273, 288), and map of Hanway, 1. 344 (1753) and the appears to have visited Baku between modern Pristan Nizovaia, from which Sept. 2 and 4, if we may judge from Baku lies southeast, not ' eastward.' his statement of a ' two days journey ^ The importance of this statement eastward from Niezbatt ' and his re- will be mentioned below in connection marks about having seen the clear with the fire temple at Surakhany. petroleum. He was in his camp at

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