HISTORICAL SUMMARY. 25 



Dr. Friedlander visited the oil-fields in 1874, and his notes, "The 

 Country of Earth-oil in Upper Burma, " were published in the Burma 

 Gazette of the same year. 1 His description is very vague and does 

 not come up to the mark of any of his predecessors. The only fact 

 worth mentioning which he records is the existence of a rude pipe- 

 line to convey the oil from the fields to the river. Dr. Friedlander 

 says : 



" Worth mentioning here is also the oleiduct now in course of construction at 

 Yenangchoung, and a decided improvement upon the old mode of transpart by 

 chatties in cans. Wholly made out of bamboo, supported by wood stages (the 

 inside lacquered), it runs with a gentle slope from the wells down to the river 

 bank : a great loss of oil by evaporation is inevitable." 



The existence of this pipe-line has been confirmed by the state- 

 ments of several natives, but they all added that the loss by leakage 

 was so great that they gave it up at once. The earth-oil wells (of 

 Yenangyoung) are situated on a plateau, says Dr. Friedlander, five 

 miles from the river near the village of Tongong (Twingon). The 

 number of wells are said to be 450. 



At Pagan (namely, Yenangyat) there are 70 wells in working, most of them 

 are new and they are adding daily others to their number; the depth of the wells 

 is from 60 to So feet. 



The late Dr. Romanes, who visited the oil-fields of Yenangyoung 

 in 1884, reports as follows 2 : — 



" The oil-wells of Yenangyoung are situated on the banks of the creek that 

 flows into the Irrawaddy at that place. There are two groups, the smaller about 

 two miles east of the town, the other about three miles north-east. 



" The country is a tableland intersected by ravines, the beds of torrents flowing 

 into the creek. The surface is covered with gravel and blocks of fossil wood. 

 Below is a great thickness of a friable sandstone, below this again a blue shale 

 alternating with beds of sand. It is in the sand that the oil is found. 



"The wells are sunk indifferently on the sides of the ravines and on the tops 

 of the hills. The strata appear to dip generally towards the west with many folds 



1 Dr. H. Friedlander. The country of earth-oil in Upper Burma. Supplement to the 

 British Burma Gazette, Feb. 14th, 1S74, pp. 45—48. 



■ R. Romanes. Report on the Yenanchoung Oil-Wells. Flsc. Pam. Rangoon, 1S84. 



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