THE OIL-SUPPLY OF THE WORLD. 257 



great cost of barrels (and here we must note that the total absence of 

 timber from all this region is a very serious item in working expenses, 

 as all the wood required for the derricks and other erections must be 

 imported from afar). 



In order to dispense with barrels, the Nobel brothers resolved to 

 carry pipes from their refineries to the sea-coast, so as to pump the oil 

 direct into great iron tanks on board the steamers, whence it might at 

 the end of its voyage be pumped into tanks on the railway, and so car- 

 ried to great reservoirs in all parts of Russia. As the railway and 

 steamboat companies persisted in their refusal to co-operate, the No- 

 bels were compelled to take every department of their business entirely 

 into their own hands. So they sent to Stockholm and to Russia to 

 have steamers built specially for their own trade, fitted with great cis- 

 terns capable of containing seven hundred and fifty tons of oil, and 

 constructed to burn only oil-fuel. They now own upward of a dozen 

 large steamers on the Caspian, and thirty specially adapted for trafiic 

 on the Volga ; and, besides these, they charter fully twoscore more 

 steamers to carry their naphtha refuse to various ports for sale. 



The petroleum shipped at Baku is carried direct to Tzaritzin on the 

 Volga, whence it is dispatched by rail to every part of the empire in 

 trains, each numbering twenty-five oil-cars. Thus it is conveyed even 

 to the shores of the Baltic, whence it passes on to Sweden, to Germany, 

 and wherever else it can effect an entrance, in determined rivalry to 

 the petroleum of America, which it has already well-nigh expelled from 

 the vast Russian market. 



In every direction is the Caspian oil now spreading. In 1883 about 

 a thousand tons were sent to England to try the British market. A 

 somewhat larger quantity was sold in France, and extensive orders 

 were taken for Austria. But it must have required the inventive 

 genius of a Swede to think of sending coals to Newcastle, in the form 

 of sending lubricating oil for machinery to America, and even this 

 has been successfully done ! And now that the railway has been 

 completed from Baku to Tiflis, and to Poti and Batoum on the Black 

 Sea, the market of the whole world is open to receive the inexhaustible 

 supplies of the Caucasian oil-fields. Turkey, and all lands on the 

 shores of the Mediterranean, with all that may be reached via the 

 Suez Canal and Red Sea, Southern India, China, and Japan — all are 

 open markets for whoever can supply the best oil at the cheapest rate. 

 It is therefore evident that America has now a formidable riVal in the 

 field. 



Of the relative merits of Pennsylvanian and Caspian oil, it may 

 be said generally that the former yields on an average seventy per 

 cent of kerosene, with a large residuum of lubricating oil. The latter 

 yields only from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent of pure oil, and 

 from twenty to thirty per cent is refuse, only fit for fuel. But here 

 Nature seems to adapt her gifts to the need of the recipients, since. 



VOL. XXTI. — 17 



