About the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, the Grecian Emperor Heraclius overturned the fire altars of the Magi at Baku, the chief city on the Caspian, but the fire worshipers were not expelled from the Caucasus until the Mohammedans subjugated the Persian Empire, when they were driven into the Rangoon, on the Irrawaddy, in India, one of the most noted petroleum producing districts of the world.
Petroleum and natural gas are so intimately related that one would hardly dare to say whether the gas proceeds from petroleum or the petroleum is deposited from the gas. It is, however, safe to assume that they are the products of one material, the lighter element separating from the heavier under certain degrees of temperature and pressure. Thus petroleum may separate from the gas as asphaltum separates from petroleum. But some speculative minds consider natural gas to be a product of anthracite coal. The fact that the great supply-field of natural gas in Western Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and Eastern Ohio is a bituminous and not an anthracite region does not of itself confute that theory, as the argument for it is, that the gas may be tapped at a remote distance from the source of supply; and, whereas anthracite is not a gas-coal, while bituminous is, we are told to suppose that the gas which once may have been a component part of the anthracite was long ago expelled by Nature, and has since been held in vast reservoirs with slight waste, awaiting the use of man. That is one theory; and upon that supposition it is suggested that anthracite may exist below the bituminous beds of the region lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Great Lakes. Another theory is, that natural gas is a product of the sea-weed deposited in the Devonian stratum. But, leaving modern theories on the origin of natural gas and petroleum, we may suppose the natural gas jets now burning in the fissures of the Caucasus to have started up in flames about the time when, according to the Old Testament, Noah descended from Mount Ararat, or very soon thereafter. In the language of modern science it would be safe to say that those flames sprang up when the Caucasus range was raised from beneath the surface of the universal sea. The believer in biblical chronology may say that those fires have been burning for four thousand years--the geologist may say for four millions.
We know that Alexander the Great penetrated to the Caspian; and in Plutarch we read: "Hence [Arbela] he marched through the province Babylon [Media?], which immediately submitted to him, and in Ecbatana [?] was much surprised at the sight of the place where fire issues in a continuous stream, like a spring of water, out of a cleft in the earth, and the stream of naphtha, which not far from this spot flows out so abundantly as to form a large lake. This naphtha, in other respects resembling bitumen, is so subject to take fire that, before it touches the flame, it will kindle at the very light that surrounds it, and often inflames the intermediate air also. The barbarians, to show the power and nature of it, sprinkled the street that led to the king's lodgings with little drops of it, and, when it was almost night, stood at the farther end with torches, which being applied to the moistened places, the first taking fire, instantly, as quick as a man could think of it, it caught from one end to another in such manner that the whole street was one continued flame. Among those who used to wait upon the king, and find occasion to amuse him, when he anointed and washed himself, there was one Athenophanus, an Athenian, who desired him to make an experiment of the naphtha upon Stephanus, who stood by in the bathing place, a youth with a ridiculously ugly face, whose talent was singing well. 'For,' said he, 'if it take hold of him, and is not put out, it must undeniably be allowed to be of the most invincible strength.' The youth, as it happened, readily consented to undergo the trial, and as soon as he was anointed and rubbed with it, his whole body was broke out into such a flame, and was so seized by the fire, that Alexander was in the greatest perplexity and alarm for him, and not without reason; for nothing could have prevented him from being consumed by it if, by good chance, there had not been people at hand with a great many vessels of water for the service of the bath, with all which they had much ado to extinguish the fire; and his body was so burned all over that he was not cured of it a good while after. And thus it was not without some plausibility that they endeavor to reconcile the fable to truth, who say this was the drug in the tragedies with which Medea anointed the crown and veils which she gave to Creon's daughter."
An interesting reference to the fire-worshipers of the Caucasus is contained in the "History of Zobeide," a tale of the wonderful Arabian Nights Entertainment. It runs thus:
"I bought a ship at Balsora, and freighted it; my sisters chose to go with me, and we set sail with a fair wind. Some weeks after, we cast anchor in a harbor which presented itself, with intent to water the ship. As I was tired with having been so long on board, I landed with the first boat, and walked up into the country. I soon came in sight of a great town. When I arrived there, I was much surprised to see vast numbers of people in different postures, but all immovable. The merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard; every one seemed engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.... I heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran.... Being curious to know why he was the only living creature in the town,... he proceeded to tell me that the city was the metropolis of a kingdom now governed by his father; that the former king and all his subjects were Magi, worshipers of fire and of Nardoun. the ancient king of the giants who rebelled against God. 'Though I was born,' continued he, 'of idolatrous parents, it was my good fortune to have a woman governess who was a strict observer of the Mohammedan religion. She taught me Arabic from Al Koran; by her I was instructed in the true religion, which I would never afterward renounce. About three years ago a thundering voice was heard distinctly throughout the city, saying, "Inhabitants, abandon the worship of Nardoun and of fire, and worship the only true God, who showeth mercy!" This voice was heard three years successively, but no one regarded it. At the end of the last year all the inhabitants were in an instant turned to stone. I alone was preserved.'"
In the foregoing tale we doubtless have reference to the destruction of Baku, on the Caspian (though to sail from Balsora to Baku is impossible), and the driving away into India, by the Arabs under Caliph Omar, of all who refused to renounce fire-worship and adopt the creed of the Koran. The turning of the refractory inhabitants into stone is probably the Arabian storyteller's figurative manner of referring to the finding of dead bodies in a mummified condition.
It is known that the Egyptians made use of bitumen, in some form, in the preservation of their dead, a fact with which the Arabians were familiar. As the Magi held the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water to be sacred, they feared to either bury, burn, sink, or expose to air the corrupting bodies of their deceased. Therefore, it was their practice to envelop the corpse in a coating of wax or bitumen, so as to hermetically seal it from immediate contact with either of the four sacred elements. Hence the idea of all the bodies of the Magi left at Baku being turned to stone, while only the true believer in Mohammed remained in the flesh.
Marco Polo, the famous traveler of the thirteenth century, makes reference to the burning jets of the Caucasus, and those fires are known to the Russians as continuing in existence since the army of Peter the Great wrested the regions about the Caspian from the modern Persians. The record of those flaming jets of natural gas is thus brought down in an unbroken chain of evidence from remote antiquity to the present day, and they are still burning.
Numerous Greek and Latin writers testify to the known existence of petroleum about the shores of the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. More modern citations may, however, be read with equal interest. In the "Journal of Sir Philip Skippon's Travels in France," in 1663, we find the following curious entries:
"We stayed in Grenoble till August 1st, and one day rode out, and, after twice fording the river Drac (which makes a great wash) at a league's distance, went over to Pont de Clef, a large arch across that river, where we paid one sol a man; a league further we passed through a large village called Vif, and about a league thence by S. Bathomew, another village, and Chasteau Bernard, where we saw a flame breaking out of the side of a bank, which is vulgarly called La Fountaine qui Brule; it is by a small rivulet, and sometimes breaks out in other places; just before our coming some other strangers had fried eggs here. The soil hereabouts is full of a black stone, like our coal, which, perhaps, is the continual fuel of the fire.... Near Peroul, about a league from Montpelier, we saw a boiling fountain (as they call it), that is, the water did heave up and bubble as if it boiled. This phenomenon in the water was caused by a vapor ascending out of the earth through the water, as was manifest, for if that one did but dig anywhere near the place, and pour water upon the place new digged, one should observe in it the like bubbling, the vapor arising not only in that place where the fountain was, but all thereabout; the like vapor ascending out of the earth and causing such ebullition in water it passes through hath been observed in Mr. Hawkley's ground, about a mile from the town of Wigan, in Lancashire, which vapor, by the application of a lighted candle, paper; or the like, catches fire and flames vigorously. Whether or not this vapor at Peroul would in like manner catch fire and burn I cannot say, it coming not in our minds to make the experiment.... At Gabian, about a day's journey from Montpelier, in the way to Beziers, is a fountain of petroleum. It burns like oil, is of a pungent scent, and a blackish color. It distills out of several places of the rock all the year long, but most in the summer time. They gather it up with ladles and put it in a barrel set on end, which hath a spigot just at the bottom. When they have put in a good quantity, they open the spigot to let out the water, and when the oil begins to come presently stop it. They pay for the farm of this fountain about fifty crowns per annum. We were told by one Monsieur Beaushoste, a chymist in Montpelier, that petroleum was the very same with oil of jet, and not to be distinguished from it by color, taste, smell, consistency, virtues, or any other accident, as he had by experience found upon the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in several places, as at Berre, near Martague, in Provence; at Messina, in Sicily, etc."