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NOETLING : PETROLEUM IN BURMA. 



Captain Yule, 1855. 



It is contained in Captain (afterwards Sir Henry) 

 Yule's account of the Mission to Ava 1 in 1855, 

 in which two members of the Mission, Captain Yule and Dr. Oldham, 

 give their observations, and as they are of great importance, I give 

 both accounts in extenso. The following is Captain Yule's 

 description : — 



" We started early to visit the earth-oil wells, or mines, as they might be 

 called....... Our road wound about among the ravines and up the steep sides of the 



rotten sandstone hills, till, about three miles from the town, we came upon the 

 plateau on which the principal wells are situated. It is an irregular table with a 

 gently rising surface, forming a sort of peninsula among the ravines. 



" The wells are frequent along its upper surface, and on the sides and spurs of 

 the ravines which bound it on the north and south-east. They are said to be about 

 a hundred in number, but of these some are exhausted or not worked. The 

 depth of the wells appeared to vary in tolerable proportion with the height of the 

 well-mouth above the river level, but an inspection of the lowest, situated near the 

 bottoms of the ravines, enabled us to ascertain that all were sunk a good deal 

 below the level of the ravine bottoms which bounded the plateau. Those that we 

 measured (by pacing the length of the rope used) on the top of the plateau were 

 180 feet, 190 feet, and 270 feet in depth to the oil. One was said to be 20 cubits 

 deeper than this last, which would give a depth of about 306 feet. 



" As far as we could judge, the area within which these wells stand does not 

 exceed half a square mile. The wells are in some places pretty close together ; 

 less, that is to say, than a hundred feet apart. They are all exactly alike in 

 appearance; rectangular orifices about four and a-half feet by three and a-half, 

 and lined with horizontal timbers the whole way down. The oil appears to be 

 found in a stratum of impure lignite, with a good deal of sulphur. In one of the 

 valleys we saw a stratum of this out-cropping, with the oil oozing between the 

 laminae. Doubtless, it was in this way originally discovered ; some Burman, with 

 a large inductive faculty, having been led to sink a shaft from above. 



" A rude windlass, mounted on the trunk of a tree, laid across two forked 

 stems, is all the machinery used. An earthen pot is let down and filled, and then 

 a man or woman walks down the slope of the hill with the rope. There is another 

 group of oil-wells in a valley about a mile to the southward. 



" The petroleum from these pits is very generally used as a lamp-oil all over 

 Burma. It is also used largely on the wood-work and planking of houses, as a 

 preservative from insects, and for several minor purposes, as a liniment, and even 

 a medicine taken internally. The Chinese Geography, translated in Thevenot's 

 Voyages curieux, says that it is a sovereign remedy for the itch, which its sulphur- 

 ous affinities render highly probable. There is now a considerable export of the 



1 A narrative of the Mission sent by the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava in 

 1855, with notices of the country, government, and people. General report by Captain H. Yuiej 

 Geological Report by Dr. Oldham : 4 London 1858, pages 19 — 22. 



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