Persia : The Awakening East 



357 



which the treasures of Golconda pale 

 into insignificance, and that on the desert 

 near by would arise a great city, peopled 

 by a restless throng of wealth-seekers 

 drawn from every corner of the globe. 



The drive from the railway station to 

 the oil-fields lay along a slippery road, 

 deep with oily mud, into which our con- 

 veyance sank almost to the hub. By the 

 wayside, half-naked Tatars were busily 

 skimming the waste oil from the surface 

 of slimy pools and rivulets, and our 

 guide told us that even at this miserable 

 business they make an excellent profit. 

 To touch foot to the ground meant irre- 

 trievable ruin to boots and clothing, so 

 that every one (even the natives) rode, 

 and a file of rickety vehicles stretched in 

 a continuous procession along the nar- 

 row highway. Every form of wheeled 

 conveyance was represented, from 

 spring wagons of American make to 

 high Turcoman carts set on enormous 

 wheels often eight feet or more in diam- 

 eter. 



The surface of the country surround- 

 ing the oil-fields seemed literally to ex- 

 ude crude petroleum, and the stench 

 from the slough through which we were 

 slowly traveling was indescribable, al- 

 though fortunately by this time we were 

 beginning to grow accustomed to the 

 odor. 



As we approached nearer, the clank of 

 pulleys and windlass filled the air. In 

 every one of the tall timber pyramids 

 that covered the mouth of the narrow 

 "borings" a Tatar workman watched the 

 simple mechanism that lets down a long 

 metal bucket into the bowels of the earth 

 and draws it up filled with crude petro- 

 leum mixed with water and sand. Within 

 recent years American tools and methods 

 have increased the output of the wells a 

 hundred-fold. The present system of 

 boring is copied from the methods used 

 in the Pennsylvania oil-fields, and many 

 of the engineers who direct the opera- 

 tion for the Russian companies are 

 Americans or Englishmen. In the old 

 days, under the reign of the petroleum 

 monopoly, the Russian concessionaires 



were content to confine their operations 

 to enlarging the natural wells and 

 springs of naphtha which rise to the sur- 

 face of the earth all over the plateau of 

 Bala-Khane. 



But with the advent of foreigners 

 these primitive methods have been aban- 

 doned. The wells are now sunk far 

 down through sand and rock in search 

 of rich strata and fresh beds of oil sand, 

 and the costly instruments used repre- 

 sent the triumph of years of Yankee in- 

 genuity and experience in the oil-fields 

 of the New World. In spite of fears to 

 the contrary, there appears no end to the 

 supply of crude petroleum. Even at the 

 time of their maximum output, the flow 

 of oil from the wells of Baku was appar- 

 ently undiminished. Under the plateau 

 of Bala-Khane lies an underground sea 

 of naphtha, and in some places but a few 

 yards of oil-soaked earth covers this nat- 

 ural reservoir. Once the "crust" has 

 been pierced by the drill, the oil comes 

 gushing of its own accord to the surface, 

 driven by the force of natural gases. 

 Just before the riots of 10,05, the yearly 

 output of the oil-wells of Baku amounted 

 to more than twelve and one-half million 

 tons of refined oil, and the most impor- 

 tant problem confronting the oil compa- 

 nies was that of mutually limiting their 

 output in order to keep the price at a 

 profitable figure. 



During our visit we had an oppor- 

 tunity to view at close quarters the wild 

 hordes of Tatar workmen employed in 

 the oil-fields. A more abject and de- 

 graded lot of human beings it would be 

 difficult to find anywhere on the face of 

 the earth. Their villages of mud huts 

 were set down on the treeless, sandy 

 plain, far enough away from the wells 

 for them to light their cooking fires in 

 safety, and here we found the stench of 

 oil, added to the all-pervadirg odors of 

 Oriental housekeeping, almost overpow- 

 ering. Some of the foreign companies 

 make a pretense of housing their work- 

 men in long wooden sheds, which are 

 forcibly cleaned at rare intervals, but by 

 far the arreater number live in rough en- 



