The statement concerning the enormous yield from some of the wells of this district may well challenge our credulity. The following graphic description of the bursting forth of the great Droojba fountain is from an eyewitness and is given in the words of Mr. Charles Marvin: "In America there are over 25,000 petroleum wells; Baku possesses 400, but a single one of these 400 wells has thrown up as much oil in a day as nearly the whole of the 25,000 in America put together. This is very wonderful, but a more striking fact is that the copiousness of the well should have ruined its owners and broken the heart of the engineer who bored it after having yielded enough oil in four months to have realized in America at least one million sterling. In Pennsylvania that fountain would have made its owner's fortune. There is $50,000 worth of oil flowing out of the well every day. Here it has made the owner a bankrupt (on account of the damage done by the oil to surrounding property). These words were addressed to me by an American petroleum engineer as I stood alongside of the well that had burst the previous morning and out of which the oil was flowing twice as high as the Great Geyser in Iceland with a roar that could be heard several miles round. The fountain was a splendid spectacle and it was the largest ever known at Baku. When the first outburst took place the oil had knocked off the roof and part of the sides of the derrick, but there was a beam left at the top, against which the oil broke with a roar in its upward course and which served in a measure to check its velocity. The derrick itself was 70 feet high and the oil and the sand, after bursting through the roof and sides, flowed three times higher, forming a grayish-black fountain, the column clearly defined on the southern side, but merging into a cloud of spray thirty yards broad on the other. The strong southerly wind enabled us to approach within a few yards of the crater on the former side and to look down into the sandy basin from around about the bottom of the derrick, where the oil was bubbling and seething round the stalk of the oil-shoot like a geyser. The diameter of the tube up which the oil was rushing was 10 inches. On issuing from this the fountain formed a clearly defined stem about 18 inches thick and shot up to the top of the derrick, where, in striking against the beam, which was already half-worn through by friction, it got broadened out a little. Thus continuing its course more than 200 feet high, it curled over and fell in a dense cloud to the ground on the northern side, on a sand bank, over which the olive-colored oil ran in innumerable channels toward the lakes of petroleum that had been formed on the surface of the estate. Now and again the sand flowing up with the oil would obstruct the pipe or a stone would clog the course; then the column would sink for a few seconds lower than 200 feet, but rise directly afterward with a burst and a roar to 300 feet.... Some