Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/270

258 the American oils flow in the heart of the forests, while in Central Asia the oil-fuel makes existence and travel possible.

As regards quantity, in the year 1872 only 212,000 barrels were saved from the waste at the Caspian wells. In 1881 the amount rescued was 4,000,000 barrels, equal to 160,000,000 gallons. In the same year America produced 1,450,000,000 gallons. Commenting on these figures, Ludwig Nöbel says that the same amount could annually be produced at Baku without the slightest difficulty, but that at present it would be useless to do so, owing to difficulties of cheap transport. As it is, great stores lie waste for lack of purchasers, and the amount wasted is fully equal to that which is exported.

As regards price, which in America has varied from tenpence to one penny per gallon, it has at Baku fluctuated from one shilling and eightpence to one penny. In like manner, the barrel of forty gallons of crude petroleum, which in the days of monopoly sold at Baku for eight shillings, has latterly fetched fourpence, and by the latest accounts was further reduced to threepence halfpenny per ton on the spot! This is due to the enormous increase in the supply. Thus, last November a steady-going old well, which for the past ten years has been quietly yielding a fair amount of oil, suddenly commenced to play, and thenceforth threw up a daily average of five hundred tons!

The supply is apparently altogether inexhaustible, for already twelve thousand square miles in this region have been proved to be oleiferous, and of this vast surface only six miles are as yet being developed. The oil-bearing stratum is found to extend beneath the Caspian Sea, where it crops up in Tcheliken, a true isle of oil, which literally streams into the sea from hills and cliffs which are entirely formed of ozokerite—in other words, of crude paraffine.

On the eastern shore of the Caspian it reappears at Krasnovodsk and elsewhere. A hundred miles inland lies the Neft, or Naphtha Hill, whose deposits are officially valued at £35,000,000 sterling—oleonapht, as this particular material is called, being found especially valuable for lubricating machinery; so it promises to become an important article of export.

The oil-bearing stratum also reappears in the opposite direction; for as Baku lies at the eastern extremity of the Caucasus range, so at its western extremity, on the shores of the Black Sea, lies another great petroleum-region in the river-basin of the Kouban River, in the province of the same name. This oil-field, extending over about two hundred and fifty miles, terminates in the peninsula of Taman, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof—a strange region, abounding in mud-volcanoes, some extinct, others still active, which, combined with strong outflows of gas and occasional earthquakes, prove subterranean action to be only quiescent.

The natural petroleum-pits are scattered in all directions; some lie