At Langarood he fell ill of a low fever, but was cured by a French missionary, who administered Jesuit’s bark (quinine) to him, and he then set out on his return journey, having invested all his cash in raw silk. He met with no particular adventures, and arrived safely at St. Petersburg on the 1st of January, 1745, ‘having been absent a year and sixteen weeks, in which time I had travelled about four thousand English miles by land.’ In noticing this trip of Hanway’s to the Caspian, it would be a pity if attention were not called to his description of Baku, now coming so much to the front (thanks to the industry and intelligence of the Messrs. Nobel) in providing the world with petroleum. This was the chief shrine of the followers of Zoroaster, who considered light, which was typified by fire, (which is bright both by day and night) as emblematical of all good, and they therefore worshipped Ormuzd, or the good god, whilst they regarded Ahriman, or darkness, as the evil god. Here, near Baku, the soil is so soaked and saturated with petroleum that a fire, natural and never-ceasing, could easily be obtained, and consequently, being perfectly unartificial, was looked upon as the personification of Ormuzd. Hanway writes, ‘The earth round this place, for above two miles, has this surprizing property, that by taking up two or three inches of the surface and applying a live coal, the part which is so uncovered immediately takes fire, almost before the coal touches the earth.... If a cane, or tube even of paper, be set about two inches in the ground, confined and closed with earth below, and the top of it touched with a live coal, and blown upon, immediately a flame issues without hurting either the cane or the paper, provided the edges be covered with clay, and this method they use for light in their houses, which have only the earth for the floor; three or four of these lighted canes will boil water in a pot; and thus they dress their victuals.’ Baku, the seat of this natural symbol of Ormuzd, was then a place of pilgrimage for the Parsees--and it is not so long since that fire-worship there has been discontinued. Mr. Charles Marvin (writing in 1884) commences his most interesting book, ‘The Region of the Eternal Fire,’ thus: ‘A few years ago a solitary figure might have been daily seen on the shore of the Caspian Sea, worshipping a fire springing naturally from the petroleum gases in the ground. The devotee was a Parsee from India, the last of a series of priests who for more than two thousand five hundred years had tended the sacred flame upon the spot. Round about his crumbling temple was rising greasy derricks, and dingy distilleries--symbols of a fresh cult, the worship of mammon--but, absorbed in his devotions, the Parsee took no heed of the intruders. And so time passed on, and the last of the Fire-Worshippers died, and with him perished the flame that was older than history.’