10 



NOETLING: PETROLEUM IN BURMA. 



the well, is an axle crossing the center of the well, resting on two rude-forked 

 stanchions, with a revolving barrel on its center, like the nave of a wheel, in which 

 is a score for receiving the draw rope, the bucket is of wicker work, covered with 

 dammer, and the labour of the drawers, in general three men, is facilitated by the 

 descent of the inclined plain, as water is drawn from deep wells in the interior of 

 Hindostan, 



" To receive the oil, one man is stationed at the brink of the well, who empties 

 the bucket into a channel made on the surface of the earth leading to a sunk jar, 

 from whence it is ladled into smaller ones, and immediately carried down to the 

 river, either by coolies or on hackeries. 



" When a well grows dry, they deepen it. They say none are abandoned for 

 barrenness. Even the death of a miner, from mephitic air, does not deter others 

 from persisting in deepening them when dry. Two days before my arrival a 

 man was suffocated in one of the wells, yet they afterwards renewed their at- 

 tempts without further accident. I recommended their trying the air with a can- 

 dle, etc., but seemingly with little effect. 



° The oil is drawn pure from the wells, in the liquid state as used, without 

 variation, but in the cold season it congeals in the open air, and always loses some- 

 thing of its fluidity ; the temperature of the wells preserving it in a liquid state fit to 

 be drawn. A man who was lowered into a well of no cubits, in my presence, and 

 immediately drawn up ; perspired copiously at every pore; unfortunately I had 

 no other means of trying the temperature. The oil is of a dingy green and odor- 

 ous; it is used for lamps and boiled with a little dammer (a resin of the country) 

 for painting the timbers of houses, and the bottoms of boats, etc., which it preserves 

 from decay and vermin ; its medicinal properties known to the natives is as a lotion 

 in cutaneous eruptions, and as an embrocation in bruises and rheumatic affections. 



" The miners positively assured me no water ever percolates through the 

 earth into the wells, as has been supposed, the rains in this part of the country 

 are seldom heavy, and during the season a roof of thatch is thrown over the wells ; 

 the water that falls soon runs off to the river, and what penetrates into the earth 

 is effectually prevented from descending to any great depth by the increasing hard- 

 ness of the oleagenous argill and shist ; this will readily be admitted, when it 

 is known that the coal mines at Whitby are worked below the harbour, and the roof 

 of the galleries not more than fifty feet from the bed of the sea, the deficiency of 

 rain in this tract may be owing to the high range of mountains to the westward, 

 which range parallel to the river and arrest the clouds in their passage, as is the 

 case on the eastern side of the peninsula of India. 



" Solicitous to obtain accurate information on a subject so interesting as this 

 natural source of wealth, I had all the principal proprietors assembled on board 

 my boat, and collected from them the following particulars, the foregoing I 

 learned at the wells from the miners and others. 



" I endeavoured to guard against exaggeration, as well as to obviate the 

 caution and reserve which mercantile men in all countries think it necessary to 

 observe, when minutely questioned on subjects affecting their interests, and I have 

 to hope my information is not very distant from the truth. 



( 56 ) 



