Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/267

Rh that the streets are watered with coarse, black naphtha, which lays the dust effectually for about a fortnight, and then forms a thick, brown bituminous dust, that ingrains clothes indelibly, but over which carriages glide noiselessly, so that the inhabitants are at least spared one item of torture. On the other hand, they have to breathe an atmosphere poisoned by the dense smoke pouring from the chimneys of about two hundred and fifty refining-factories, and the whole air is redolent of all-pervading petroleum.

Equally desolate and dreary is the surrounding country, which by nature is totally unproductive. Some morsels are carefully cultivated, but there is no natural vegetation, nothing but great dismal flats saturated with the naphtha, which lies on the surface in pools and lakes.

The principal oil-wells of the Baku district lie at Balaxame or Balakhani, about six miles to the northeast of the town: this is an oil-field about three and a half miles in length by one and a half in breadth. To the south lies a smaller field called Bebeabat. One fountain at Balakhani, ninety-eight feet in depth, is noted as having been flowing steadily for upward of two years, and still continuing to yield 800 barrels a day. Another well not far off, 490 feet deep, commenced its career by throwing up a jet thirty feet in the air, and then flooding the land with oil for a considerable distance all around, overflowing other wells and several small refineries, so as effectually to stop their work. The roar of the rushing oil and gas could be heard a mile from the spot.

Various flowing wells are said to yield 6,000 barrels a day, and some far more; but, from the fact that these quantities are generally stated in the Russian measure of poods, it is not very easy to realize what is meant. One pood, we learn, is equal to thirty-six pounds English. Hence one thousand poods represent somewhere about sixteen tons. Accounts have just reached England of an oil-fountain which was struck last December, and flows at the rate of from fifty to sixty thousand poods daily, gushing forth with such force as to break in pieces a three-inch cast-iron plate which had been fastened over the well in order to divert the flow in a particular direction. In the same district a huge heap of sand marks the spot where an oil-spring, on being tapped, straightway threw up a column of petroleum to twice the height and size of the Great Geyser in Iceland, forming a huge black fountain two hundred feet in height—a fountain, however, due solely to the removal of the pressure on the confined gas, for there is no trace of volcanic heat. The fountain was visible for many miles round, and on the first day it poured forth about two million gallons, equal to fifty thousand barrels.

An enterprising photographer who was on the spot secured a photograph which places this matter beyond cavil. The fountain continued to play for five months, gradually decreasing week by week, till it finally ceased to play, leaving its unfortunate owners (an Armenian