Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/432

426 the country there was an annual sacrifice by the Fire-worshippers. A young man was thrown into one of the fissures, where he perished, though some writers assert that he leaped voluntarily, through the persuasion of the priests.

"Though famous through many centuries, and carried thousands of miles east and west for purposes of illumination, the oil of Baku was never gathered in large quantities until the present century, and the exploitation of the oil-fields on a grand scale is an affair of the last twenty years.

"In 1820 it was estimated that the yield of the Baku oil-wells was about four thousand tons of naphtha, of which the greater part was sent to Persia. The annual production remained about the same until 1860, when it was 5484 tons; in 1864 it was 8700 tons; in 1870, 27,500; and in 1872, 24,800 tons. Down to that time the Government held a monopoly of the oil-fields, and levied a royalty for operating them. In 1872 the monopoly was removed, and the lands were offered for sale or long lease.

"There was a rush of speculators to the oil fields, stimulated by the knowledge of what had been accomplished in America. Sixty-four thousand tons were produced in 1873, 94,000 in 1875, 242,000 in 1877, 420,000 in 1880, 800,000 in 1883, and over 1,000,000 tons in 1884. In 1885 the total quantity of raw petroleum pumped or received from the wells was 105,000,000 poods, or nearly 2,000,000 tons. Twenty-seven million poods, or nearly 500,000 tons, were distilled at Baku. The largest portion,