1918] 



on The Romance of Petroleum 



843 



boilers, and although the fires had been drawn the gas ignited. The 

 flame was immediately communicated to the out-flowing oil, and the 

 well burned for a period of fifty-eight days with an estimated loss of 

 3,000,000 barrels of oil. A photograph (Fig. 5) of the burning well 

 is now on the screen. For the loan of this, and the two succeeding 

 photographs, I am indebted to Lord Cowdray. 



The flames reached a height estimated at 1460 feet, with a 

 maximum breadth of about 480 feet. So brilliant was the light 

 emitted that at 9.40 p.m. on July 8 persons on board a vessel at 

 anchor on the Tamiahua lagoon, a distance of nearly 11 miles from 



Fig. 5. — Mexico. Burning Well, 



the well, were able to read a newspaper by it. This is the more 

 remarkable when it is considered that the approximate Umit of dis- 

 tance at which an object 100 feet high is visible to a spectator at 

 sea-level is a little over 12 miles, so that unless the light from the 

 burning well had been reflected from smoke or cloud, only the upper 

 part of the column of flame could have had illuminating effect at the 

 distance recorded. Besides ejecting the large quantity of oil men- 

 tioned, the well yielded a considerable volume of water, estimated to 

 reach at times nearly 1,500,000 barrels daily. This great flow of 

 liquid carried away from the sides of the well solid matter estimated 

 approximately at 2,000,000 tons. On August 31 the flow of oil 



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