The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1877-07-07
So PER ANNUM

OF one and half pence per fifty pounds
weight of oil. At the works of the Kalafy
Company, an Armenian concern, when
their well was first opened, the petroleum
burst up iu fountain nine feet in diane
ter, part of which rose forty feet in the
air. At all the wells the oil is now raised
In circular tubes about nine feet long, and
as many inches in diameter, with a valve
at the lower end which opens on touching
the ground, and closes when the tube i.
lifted. This cylinder is lowered empty,
and raised again when filed with OIL in
less than two minutes A man pulls the
full tube toward tub, into which its con,
tents are poured, and through hole in
the tub the oil runs into the. pit from
which the skins and barrels are filled
We were assured that the Baku petroleum
is of better quality than the oil of Penn,
sylyania, and that it is less dangerous, be.
cause its flashing point of temperature is
from thirty to forty degrees higher than
that Of the American product
OLDEST FIRE IN THE WORLD.
1t is certainly very wonderful, upon a
sandy plain, with not a tree nor blade OF
grass in sight, to look upon a reservoir of
liquid fuel thus drawn from this stony
soil yet to our thinking there was spec
tacle much more curious, about twelve
yersts farther from Baku, when we came
to one of the oldest altars in the world,
erect and flaming with its natural burnt
offering to this day. Surakhani is an
ancient seat of probably one of the most
ancient forms of worship. For unnum.
bered ages, the gas which is generated by
this subterranean store of oil, identical
with that which caused the Regents Park
explosion, has escaped through long-estab.
lshed and inaccessible assures in the lime.
stone crags of which the hills in the
neighborhood are composed, and the fire
Of this gas has lighted the prayers of
generations Of priests, as it blazed and
hared away to the heavens.
Fire-worship in Persia, of which until
the eighteenth century Baku formed a
part, is older than history. When We
have passed about a thousand miles farther
south, between lspahan and Shiraz, we
shall come, at the ruins Of lstakr and
Persepolis, upon authentic traces of the
reigns Of Cyrus, Of Darius, Of Xerxcs and
Artaxerxes. But the fire. worshiping pc
riOd is older than Cyrus. We do not know
when the remnant Of the ire.worshipers
was driven southwark, nor precisely how
far We are justified in assuming the Par
sees of India to be their descendants.
But we find the Parsees using as sacred
books the "Xondavesta' Of the Zoroas-
trians; and We know that at an obscure
town between Kurrachee and Bombay
there is Parsee temple, the fire in which
is regarded with peculiar reverence as the
'oldest" fire in the world, the tradition
among the Parsees being that this FIRE was
originally brought in charred wood from
q temple in Persia, and that it has never
since been suffered to expire. 1t may be
that the fire in this temple has been un-
extinguished for period extending from
before the time of Cyrus. at is, says
Professor Westergaard, "to this ante
AchGmenian period that | refer Ioroas-
ter; aud fiud it, therefore, quite natural
that he could have belonged to a remote
and uncertain antiquity SO early as in the
fourth' century before Christ, when his
name is first mentioned by Greek authors.
The main accounts of his lore date, |
think, from the period which they init
mate; and their language, two cognato
dialects of very distinctive character, pos
sesses u greater store of grammatical forms,
and has an appearance less worn, and con-
sequently older, than the old Persian, in
the descriptions of Darius, the nearest
cognate branch
For long, long ages, the worship of these
flaming issues Of petroleum gas at Surka.
hani has been maintained by delegations
Of priests from India, who have died and
been buried upon the spot, to be succeeded
by other deyotees from the same country.
1t would, of course, be possible to extin-
guish the blaze, if one were to choke the
assures; and the people about the place
say that sometimes, when the wind rises
to hurricane, the fire is actually put out.
The gas, however, can then at once be re-
| lighted with match. We saw this done,
not, as Of yore, with mysterious incanta.
tions, and the terrified awe of superstitious
worshipers, but-to what base uses may
gods come i'm order to burn lime for
Baku, and to purify the oil raised from the
natural reservoir in which the gas is gen
Grated We thought that never, perhaps,
had we seen man more to be pitied than
the "poor Indian" who is the successor
of a long line of religiously appointed
guardians of this once wholly sacred spot.
There the light of this lamp of nature 5
making fared on its formerly hallowed
altar-place, maid of all work to half a
dozen degenerate Persiaus, now subjects
of the Christian Tsar, who thought of
nothing but making lime, and of warming
their messes of sour milk and unleavened
bread Iu another place the gas was con-
Quoted from the surface of tho ground
into q furnace, where it famed beneath
vats of petroleum, in the process of refn-
ing the native oil by distillation. Surely
there never was such pitiful reductio dd
dJsmduRl! Before US stood the priest of
very venerable religion, which has
always seemed to me to be one of the
most noble and natural for a primitive
people. There he stood, ready for half a
ruble to perform the rites of his worn.out
worship, and there also was the object of
his lifelong devotion set to work as econo.
mic firing. Such rude encounter of the
old and the new, of idcality and utility,
of the practical and the visionary, was
surely never seen elsewhere.
PERSIAN WOMEN IN PUBLIC.
A few women are seen. We met one
sitting astride on horseback, as all Eastern
women ride. We believe them to be wom-
en- because of their costume and size; but
we eau see no part of them, not even hand
or an eye. They are shrouded from the
head to the knees in cotton or silk sheet
of dark blue or black; the "chudder," it is
called; which passes over the head, and
is held with the hands around and about
the body. Over the "chudder" there is
tied round the head yard-long veil Of
| n Han l. .sl.ol, kac