Near the temple a well has been dug fifty feet deep, in which the gas accumulates in larger quantities. Koch (‘Wanderungen im Oriente,’ 1843–4) tells us that he here enjoyed a sight more wonderful and surprising than any he had ever witnessed before. A carpet was spread over the mouth of the well to prevent the gas from escaping. After a few minutes, a priest seized a bundle of brushwood, in which a piece of burning paper had been stuck, and flung it into the well, after quickly removing the carpet. The strangers had previously been warned to keep at some distance, and the priest and his assistants likewise ran off as fast as they could. About half a minute after the fire-brand had been cast into the pit, a terrific explosion took place, and a vast column of fire, in the shape of an inverted cone (from the gas spreading out as soon as it emerges from the pit), ascended to the skies. How long the fires of Baku may have been burning is unknown, but it is very probable that they did not exist before the Christian era. No Greek or Roman author mentions them, and it is not before the tenth century that Arab writers take notice of Baku and its wonders. When the Sassanides restored the religion of Zoroaster, the attention of these fire-worshipping princes was naturally directed to a place where fire gushes pure and unbidden from the earth. They raised a temple on the spot, and thousands of pilgrims wandered to the holy fires of Baku. But when the fanatical Arabs overthrew the Persian Empire, times of persecution and distress began for the Parsees; and still later they were almost entirely extirpated by the hordes of Tamerlane. During the last centuries fire-worshipping was again introduced by the Indians, who, after the Sefides had ascended the Persian throne, gradually settled in the Caspian provinces, and whose number must have been considerable, as travellers inform us that in the latter half of the seventeenth century 200 rich Indian merchants were residing in the town of Schemachi. But the anarchical times which followed the usurpation of Nadir Schah forced most of these Indians to leave their adopted country, and since then only solitary pilgrims have found their way to Baku. But the number even of these is constantly diminishing, although the Russians, to whom the sanctuary now belongs, allow them full freedom of access. When Koch was at Baku, he found there only five Indians from Mooltan, whither the majority would gladly have returned, had they but possessed the necessary means. Their squalid appearance and tattered raiment formed the strongest imaginable contrast to the splendour of the element they worshipped. Among them was a Fakir, who had made a vow constantly to remain in the same position absorbed in religious contemplation, and who for sixteen years had never moved from the spot.