"EVERLASTING FIRES”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20005, 23 November 1927, Page 7

"EVERLASTING FIRES”

ON THB CASPIAN SHORE. OIL GUSHERS AFLAME. Few regions are more remarkable than those near the Caspian Sea. The waters of this sea once stretched far north and joined the Arctic Ocean, but now, after countless ages, they have receded to their present limits. Vase stretches of waste and barren land are left where the waters once extended; erts of redish clay with occasional slimy marshes. This is the region known as the “Land of Everlasting Fire.” For after sunset, leaping up on ail sides from rents in the interminable plain, rise ghostly dancing tongues of flame, untarnished by smoke, casting a lurid light all round. Dotted about lie squat, four-square temples, from whoso pinnacles rise columns of fierce flame, the dread go»3s incarnate of the fire worshippers. These columns are said to have burnt without intermission since the birth of Confucius. These everlasting fires are not the disembodied souls of dead men and demons, as the natives believe, but are due to torrents of gas which stream out from underground regions and are igniteri; spontaneously. Indeed, in this amazing (district it is possible to dig a small hole and then by applying a live coal to cause it to burst into ’flames. And if a tube of paper be stuck about two inches in the ground and the top of it touched with a live coal a flame will issue forth from it. while if the edges of the paper have been smeared with clay it will not catch fire- Thus we can see that the country indeeri lives up to its name!