AN OIL REFINERY WITH TANK CARS.
"We found the road by no means the best in the world," said the youth, "as no effort is made to keep it in repair, and the track is through a desert. On our right as we left Baku is the Chorney Gorod, or Black Town, which contains the refineries; it reminded us of Pittsburg, with its many chimneys and the cloud of smoke that hung over it. Then we crossed the track of the railway, and the lines of pipe that supply the refineries with oil. Right and left of us all over the plain there are reservoirs and pools of petroleum; there are black spots which indicate petroleum springs, and white spots denoting the presence of salt lakes. By-and-by we see a whole forest of derricks, which tells us we are nearing Balakhani, the centre of the oil-wells.
TARTAR CAMEL-CART AT BAKU.
"Passing on our left the end of a salt lake five or six miles long, we enter the region covered by these derricks, and our guide takes us to the Droojba well, which spouted a stream of petroleum three hundred feet high when it was opened. Two million gallons of petroleum were thrown out daily for a fortnight or more from this one well, and two months after it was opened it delivered two hundred and fifty thousand gallons daily. Our guide said it ruined its owners and drove them into bankruptcy!
"You will wonder, as we did, how a discovery that ought to have made a fortune for its owners did exactly the reverse. We asked the guide, and he thus explained it:
"'The Droojba Company had only land enough for a well, and none for reservoirs. The oil flowed upon the grounds of other people, and became their property. Some of it was caught on waste ground that belonged to nobody, but the price had fallen so low that the company did not realize from it enough to pay the claims of those whose property was damaged by the débris that flowed from the well along with the petroleum. In this region considerable sand comes with the oil. The sandy product of the Droojba well was very large, and did a great deal of damage. It covered buildings and derricks, impeded workings, filled the reservoirs of other companies or individuals, and made as much havoc generally as a heavy storm.'
