Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/266

254 flame were obtained by merely inserting pipes into the earth. A later report, however, states that since this spot has become so important a center of busy trade and the springs have been desecrated by the imprisonment of the oil and gas in vulgar commercial tanks and pipes, the ancient fire-temple has been abandoned, and in place of reverent worshipers, wondering travelers go for an evening row on the Caspian, to visit the submarine oil-springs to the south of the town of Baku, whence petroleum and naphtha rise to the surface, forming little eddies on the shallow waters (the depth of the sea at this point being only about fourteen feet). On to each eddy they throw a handful of blazing straw, to ignite the naphtha; and thus, on a still, calm night, the sea itself appears to be in flames at a dozen spots—a truly fairylike illumination.

Besides these submarine springs, the naphtha which exudes from the ground on every side of the old Persian seaport town of Baku is so exceedingly inflammable that the light naphtha-gas was often known to ignite spontaneously, and play in pale lurid flames above fissures in the rock. On stormy nights, fanned by the wind, these flames blazed up, and this led to the town being considered by the Guebres a place of great sanctity. Arabian chroniclers likewise tell of a great volcanic mountain, now extinct, but which, eight centuries ago, was in full action, and doubtless contributed to inspire the fire-worshipers with reverence for the neighborhood.

Great, however, is the change that has come over the sleepy Persian town, with its limited trade in silk and opium, salt, naphtha, and perfumes, since the genius of commerce here established itself, and commenced working so thoroughly in earnest that Baku, which ten years ago was the peaceful home of some 12,000 persons, has now developed into a great commercial center, and a place of daily increasing political importance. It already numbers 30,000 inhabitants, and has very large shipping interests. And this transformation is wholly and solely due to petroleum.

The town which has acquired a new celebrity with such strange rapidity is situated on the Apsheron Peninsula, which is a high, sandy plain, about fifteen miles in width, and projecting thirty miles into the Caspian, from the point where the Caucasus (the mighty boundary which divides European Russia from Asia, Circassia from Georgia) terminates on its shores. It certainly can not be described as an inviting place of residence, for the dry and desert sand is only varied by patches of clay, through which here and there crops up a blue graystone.

On every side the ground is black with waste petroleum; indeed, the whole surface of the soil is as a sodden crust, into which, in hot sunshine, the foot sinks to a depth of two or three inches, while in cold weather it hardens to the consistency of asphalt. Every breath of wind raises blinding clouds of parched sand; and water is so scarce