The surroundings are forbidding. The Caspian Sea is not an attractive body of water. Its shores are as barren as a granite bowlder. There is no fresh water either above or below the surface of the ground anywhere around the coast, and the inhabitants are required to bring their supply in pipes for a long distance or else condense sea water. At every port is a floating condenser, some worn out steamer or sailing vessel which has served its time carrying cargoes and is now anchored at a convenient place off the shore and filled with machinery for transforming salt water into fresh. Sometimes the product is carried ashore by pipes, but usually in large tank barges, and then peddled around the streets like milk in our cities, from house to house.
The surroundings of Baku remind me of the nitrate towns on the coast of Chile, which are also waterless; but it is much larger and more finely built than any of them. There is already a population of 130,000 or more at Baku, and the boosters are boasting of an expected 200,000 at the end of this decade. There is no doubt that Baku is growing very fast in people and in wealth, although the oil industry is not prosperous. The Standard Oil Company of the United States is driving Russian oil out of every country except Russia and its provinces. There are many evidences of wealth in Baku; many fine business blocks and residences, churches and school-houses, shops and restaurants, and, indeed, it is quite as up-to-date as any city in the East. The large wholesale houses indicate an extensive trade, and its merchants practically control the markets of Central Asia.
The activity upon the docks indicates that there must be a large commerce on the Caspian. The quays along the seashore in front of the city for a mile or more are occupied by steamers and sailing vessels discharging and receiving cargoes, which lie in great stacks upon the wharves. Long processions of carts and wagons are constantly coming and going between the docks and the railway stations. Nearly all the commerce of Central Asia is handled there and it is brought or carried away by the two railways, one running to Batoum and the other to Odessa and Moscow.
Baku is an ancient Persian city and belongs to Russia by conquest. A majority of the inhabitants are still Persians, who furnish the manual labor; the next largest racial division are Armenians, who keep the small shops, and many of the larger ones, for that matter, and compose the mercantile class. And then come the Tartars, who are third in numbers and there, as everywhere else, are the disorderly element.
The old city is a typical Persian town, half surrounded by a wall built in the twelfth century, with monumental towers and gates, several of which have been preserved. The followers of Zoroaster came here in early times, attracted by the burning springs of naphtha, and built temples for fire worship at intervals along the coast. The Parsees of Bombay, descendants of fire worshippers who were driven from Persia by Mohammedan mobs, formerly kept up a perpetual fire upon an altar near the city, but it was extinguished several years ago, and an oil refinery now stands upon the spot.
We had rather an exciting experience trying to find one of the old temples of the fire worshippers. We hunted around the old Persian town until we discovered a man who knew where it was, and he sent two small boys to show us the way. Following them through a labyrinth of narrow streets, we came to a small block of land enclosed with a high stone wall and guarded by soldiers, who drove us off. When we tried to look through the cracks in the gates to get a glimpse of the buildings inside, they pointed their rifles at us and were dangerously demonstrative. We did not imagine that we were doing anything wrong. Our motives were as innocent as those of a Sunday-school teacher, but the guard evidently suspected that we were up to some kind of mischief, and finally threatened us with instant death unless we left the place.
At that critical moment a polite citizen came along, who remonstrated with the belligerent guard. He explained to us that the ancient temple was now used as a magazine for ammunition and had to be closely guarded because of the energy of anarchists and revolutionists in the city.
There is a Byzantine fortress 800 years old, and an imposing tower 180 feet high and 84 feet in diameter. It is circular in form, with an oblong extension, and built of regular courses of cut stone, alternating out and in about four inches. There are four doors at the base, but they are all sealed up except one. They call it the Kiskala, which in Persian means the Tower of the Virgin, and several romantic stories are told about its origin, but we finally discovered that it was built for a prison by the early Persians and is now used by the Russians for the storage of military supplies.
In ancient times, for thousands of years—no one knows how long—the Persians used to come up to the shore of the Caspian Sea, where the city of Baku now stands, and scrape from the ground the seepage from the springs of oil that were found near the water. They used these scrapings for lubricating purposes, for fuel, for light, for healing wounds, and for various other useful purposes, and exercised much ingenuity in cleansing and applying them.
At some remote date—it may have been as far back as the time of Daniel the Prophet—the fire worshippers, the followers of Zoroaster, found here several oil springs on fire. The naphtha must have caught fire by accident, but they considered it a miracle, and through many centuries made pilgrimages to worship and adore the flames. Ultimately they built a temple, a square structure of brick with a dome and four chimneys, through which, in some ingenious manner, they conducted the natural gas which exhales from the naphtha springs, and thus were able to maintain four bright flames. The temple was in the centre of a large courtyard, inclosed by a high wall, in which were rooms for the accommodation of pilgrims. The gateway was monumental and above it rose a square tower about fifty feet in height, at the four corners of which were chimneys through which the gas was conducted in the same manner as at the temple within the inclosure, and the light could be seen for many miles in every direction. They called it “The Shrine of Grace.”