Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/433

Rh at least, was sent off by sea to Astrachan, and thence up the Volga, to be forwarded by tank-cars for distribution to all parts of Russia and to Baltic ports, and thence to Germany and England. About 7,250,000 poods have been shipped by the Trans-Caucasian Railway to Batoum, on the Black Sea, going thence to the Danube, to Odessa, to Marseilles, and some by the Suez Canal to India and China. Every day large trains of tank-cars leave Baku via Tiflis for Batoum, and a pipe-line from Baku to Batoum may be looked for before long.

"Down to 1870 the oil was taken from pits which were dug like ordinary wells; boring began in that year on the American system, and the first bored well went into operation, the oil being pumped out by the ordinary pumping machinery.

"The first flowing well, or fontan (fountain), as it is called here, was struck in 1873. In that year there were only seventeen bored wells in operation, but by the end of 1874 there were upward of fifty. The flowing wells cease to flow after a time, varying from a few weeks to several months; one well spouted forty thousand gallons of oil daily for more than two years, and afterwards yielded half that amount as a pumping well. The history of many wells of this region is like a chapter from the 'Arabian Nights.'

"We are in the midst of oil, and shall be as long as we remain at Baku. There are pools of oil in the streets; the air is filled with the smell of oil; the streets are sprinkled with oil, as it is cheaper and better than water; ships and steamers are black and greasy with oil, and even our food tastes of oil. Everybody talks oil, and lives upon oil (figuratively, at least), and we long to think of something else."