CHAPTER XV.

THE CASPIAN OIL REFINERIES.

The Black Town of Baku-The 200 Refineries of the Caspian-The Smokelessness of Petroleum Fuel depends upon the Apparatus, and Care in Using it—A Lesson in Geography for English Statesmen--The Refinery of Nobel BrothersConsumption of Kerosine in America-The Growth of the Trade-Qualities of the Various Kinds of Refined Petroleum Manufactured at Baku-Agitation for a Uniform Standard-Mode of Refining Petroleum-Table Showing the Producibility of 100 Gallons of Russian Crude Petroleum-The American and Baku Oil Compared-Mr. Boverton Redwood's Analysis of Russian KerosineCondition of the Industry at Baku-The Fittings of a Refinery at Baku— Russian Lubricating Oil. Export of Kerosine to Europe - Future of the Lubricating Oil Trade -Medical Properties of Petroleum-Ozokerit Deposits East of the Caspian-Barbarous Waste of the Lighter Oils-Petroleum Dyes and Colours-Hydro-Carbon Gas at Surakhani-Natural Gas Stoves.

ONE of the most striking portions of Baku is the district lying on the bay, to the north of it, called the Black Town (Tchorni Gorod). It is here that the crude petroleum, sucked up or allowed to spout from the bowels of the earth at Balakhani, and pumped thence from reservoirs through pipes to the shore of the bay, is distilled into burning oil and other products for the markets of Europe. Altogether there are nearly 200 refineries in the Black Town, and as almost all of them, except Nobels' Works, emit vast volumes of oil-smoke, life in that locality is as bad as confinement in a chimney-pot. All day long dense clouds of smoke, possessing the well-known attributes of oil-smoke, rise from hundreds of sources in the Black Town, and either hang like a pall overhead, fouling the fair sky, or drift lazily with the breeze backwards or forwards,

THE BLACK TOWN OF BAKU.

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inland or out to sea. A more noisome town than the Black Town it would be difficult to find. The factories cover several square miles of ground. For the most

part they consist of low stone buildings of the heavy Persian style of architecture, enclosed or connected one with the other by grim stone walls. The buildings are black and greasy, the walls are black and greasy; the roads between consist of jutting rock and drifting sand, interspersed with huge pools of oil-refuse, and forming a vast morass of mud and oil in wet weather. Inside the greasy entrances to the refineries, gangs of natives may be seen at work, half naked; their bodies and their ragged clothes saturated with oil. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower or a blade of grass, not a single object to raise or refine a man is to be found in this wretched hole, where Russians and Swedes, Armenians and Persians, distil the oil that burns in the lamps of Russia. Along the shore for a mile or two are a line of jetties, stretching far out into the bay, at the head or at the sides of which huge steamers may be seen receiving aboard the oil to convey it to the Volga. Here the piers and the steamers are dirty and greasy, the sea is covered with oil-scum, the strand contains more pools of oil than of water, and stretching along it are huge embanked reservoirs holding millions of gallons of oil refuse. For Mr. Coxon, who penetrates to this infernal region, as a change to the monotony of buying beautiful Persian carpets in the bazaar, it is a new and practical lesson in geography to observe in the Caspian Sea steamers from his own native river; and as he realizes it, I cannot help wishing I had in his place the Duke of Argyll and other disbelievers in Russia's growing power in Asia, to press home to them the conviction that a country which in a few years can despatch a score or two of steamers-150 to 250 feet long,

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from the Tyne and from Stockholm to the Caspian Sea, by means of a magnificent canal system, is not likely to be much hampered in transporting the largest army across that sea for an attack upon India. For Mr. Coxon, as a representative of Newcastle, there is also another lesson to carry back to his fellow-townsmen. The steamers of the Caspian once burnt wood or coal. They burn now nothing but oil, and there are fifty of them constantly running between Baku and the Volga. In the Black Sea, the steamers at present burn chiefly English coal. But the time is not far distant when the millions of tons of crude petroleum and petroleum refuse, wasting uselessly amidst the rocks and sands of Baku and Balakhani, will be cheaply conveyed to Poti and Batoum, and drive English coal out of the Euxine. The Black Sea steamers and towns and factories will get their fuel from Baku, instead of from Newcastle, and another market will be closed to the coal trade of England.

To the blackness and smoke, and to the dirt and disorder of the Black Town, there is one very notable exception. This is the refinery of Nobel Brothers. The two hundred other refineries are buried in smoke: the atmosphere above Nobels' place is not polluted by a single whiff. The squalor of the 200 is appallingNobels' establishment is kept as clean and as bright, considering the nature of the business, as any English barracks. Yet Nobel Brothers refine more kerosine than all the other firms put together, and can now furnish a sufficient supply to equip all the year round half the lamps in Russia. The difference is simply due to good appliances and good discipline. A badly-constructed lamp, or a good lamp turned up too high, will inevitably smoke; but when an apparatus is used like that of Nobel Brothers' at Baku, not a particle of smoke need