Hythe Musketry School. Rye received a large French contingent, chiefly fugitives after Saint Bartholomew's massacre. They were as numerous as the Dutch at Sandwich; and Queen Elizabeth, who called the place Rye Royal, gave its fishermen the exclusive right of supplying her table. The French strain showed itself all through the long war in systematic smuggling. Of all the ports Winchelsea suffered most from foreign attacks. Founded at first on a sandbank, it was half ruined in 1250, losing three hundred houses. The like happened in 1284; yet the town, undismayed, bearded Prince Edward, holding out desperately for Simon de Montfort. The place was stormed, with great slaughter, for the inhabitants had put back after determining to sail away to France, and having got on shipboard, with wives and children, landing and burning Portsmouth on their way. Edward moved them up hill to the present site of the town, of which he superintended the building, and one day nearly lost his life; his horse shying at a windmill, and leaping over the cliff. New Winchelsea was only just finished in time; in 1287, the half-ruined old town was entirely swept away. But the new one throve no better; the sea, whose advance had ruined its predecessor, ruined it by retreating from its harbor. It pined; and when Elizabeth saw its mayor and barons (or jurats) in scarlet robes, like aldermen, with nothing to lord over but a heap of ruined houses, in her tart way she nicknamed it "Little London." The chief glory of the Cinque Ports is their connection with the two mediæval Trafalgars of 1216 and 1293. The first was the "battle of the Straits," that is, Hubert de Burgh's victory over Eustace the Monk, who, with the help of the barons, had seized London, taken Hastings, and overrun Kent. John was saved by his fleet, as Charles the First might have been, and James the Second also, had they had a De Burgh or a De Albini to fight for them. Eustace's first fleet was lost in a storm. The French queen and Arthur's mother managed to fit him out with another, on board of which was a French army, packed like herrings, under Robert de Courtenay. This was the ruin of the armament. Hubert, with the Cinque Ports fleet, sallied out as Drake did, nearly four centuries later, and instead of crossing the Frenchman's bows, "luffed " till they were well astern, and then, with the whole force of the wind, bore down on the unprepared enemy. Only fifteen ships escaped; Eustace was at once beheaded as a pirate; many French knights, maddened with the quicklime thrown by the English, leaped overboard. All Dover was looking on; and a grand procession of bishops and clergy, who, being "king's men," had taken refuge there since the barons held the open country, went down to meet the victors. Before 1293, feelings were much embittered on both sides. French and English could fight and be friends. When Prince Louis heard of the battle of the Straits, he at once made peace and left England. But between Gascons and Normans the case was different; the latter looked on the former as traitors, and when they took a Gascon ship would hang the sailors to their yard-arms, hanging a dog between each pair, and sailing in that guise past the Cinque Ports. Another time, eighty Norman vessels, passing themselves off in the Gironde as wine-ships, began plundering the unsus pecting English, and then attacked the Bayonne and Irish fleet, capturing sev enty. England and France were at peace just then, so the Cinque Ports took the matter into their own hands, challenged the Normans, and with a fleet of two hundred - Irish, Dutch, and Gascon among them all with streamers flying, to signify death without quarter, sailed over to St. Mahé, in Brittany, and there, helped by a furious gale, which gave scope for their seamanship, almost annihilated their opponents. Edward was alarmed at this outbreak in time of peace; but Philip's treachery in seizing the Gascon towns gave him no time to enquire into the matter. Thirty years after, the Cinque Ports took part in the victory of Sluys, won by placing ships full of archers among those containing knights and heavy armed. It was a great victory; but immediately after it the French ravaged the Kentish seaboard, just as, in 1360, when we should have thought France hopelessly weakened, she swooped down on Winchelsea, sacked and burnt it, and repeated the compliment the very same day next year. Ten years earlier had been fought the battle of Lespagnols-sur-mer, off Winchelsea, so well described by Froissart. We can see the little English ships bowl. ing along before the wind against the huge Biscayans; Sir John Chandos sing. ing the last new German "Minnelied," as the minstrels played in the forecastle; little ten-year-old John of Gaunt listening. He had refused to stay ashore with his mother, though when the battle was won he was in haste to land and ride off with the rest, to show her that her husband and sons were all safe. Winchelsea was now in her brief prime; the Alards, her chief family, were famous men. Gervase Alard was the first English admiral of the fleet. In 1380 the town was once more taken by the French, and so thoroughly ruined that it never recovered. Not even the capture of the great fleet, fitted out by Charles the Sixth to conquer England having on board a wooden wall, with lofty towers, all stowed away in pieces ready to be set up as a defence the moment the troops landed, and carrying such a stock of wine that it supplied the English market for two years -could give life to ruined Winchelsea. It was burned once more in 1448, but that was during the Wars of the Roses. The Cinque Ports were strongly Yorkist; nay, they went so far as to side with Jack Cade, to whose army Hastings furnished a dozen men, while Lydd sent him a porpoise. There is little else to notice, save the age-long rivalry between the ports and Yarmouth. Tradition says that Cinque Ports fishermen founded the place on a sandbank at the mouth of the Yare -a sort of no-man's land, where they dried their nets, and held a yearly fair. By-andby, when their huts had grown into a town, and the town had got a charter, the feud began, and at times was deadly-as in 1297, when at the Swyn, while the king's troops were landing, and under his very eyes, the Cinque Ports crews fell on the Yarmouth men, burnt more than twenty of their ships, killing the crews,* only three ships-in one of which, says Walter of Heningburg, was the king's treasure-escaping out to sea. The strangest thing is, that the Ports men were never punished. Edward published the "dite" (edict), by which the East Anglian rights were recognized; but quarrels still went on till Elizabeth's time, when, in 1663, when the fair finally ceased, the Ports men's barons had a great banquet given them by the Yarmouth bailiffs. A better country for a walking or cycling trip than the line of Cinque Ports coast it would be hard to find. Every mile gives some object of interest old castles, like Saltwood, whence the archbishops They were not always so successful; in 1356, they went west to attack the Cornish fishers, who would not lower their flag in passing; but the Fowey men- thence called "Fowey gallants" - fell on them and beat them back. overlooked their subject towns; traces of old harbors, where our navy was nursed through its babyhood; fine churches; Roman antiquities. If you go, enquire at Faversham for Harry Pay, whom the Spaniards called "the pirate Arripay." In 1407, at the head of the Ports fleet, he took, at one swoop, no less than one hundred and twenty of their merchant ships. From Nature. BAKU PETROLEUM.* THIS book is not, as its title might imply, an eschatological treatise, nor is it a work of fiction after the manner of Mr. Rider Haggard. It is simply a plain, straightforward narrative of a journey to the petroleum region of the Caspian, undertaken with a view of investigating what Mr. Marvin terms "the kerosene factor of the central-Asian problem." It has, however, this connection with eschatology, that the region of which it treats is, or was, holy ground. The peninsula of Apsheron, on which Baku stands, has been famous from time immemorial, and even before the time of Cyrus thousands of the followers of Zoroaster had worshipped on its sacred soil. With the conquest of Persia, first by Heraclius, and twelve years later by the Arabs, the power of the magi of the Zoroastrian sect was shattered; and the worship of the eternal fire in the Surakhani temple forever passed away, and in its place are now the symbols of a new cult in the shape of greasy derricks and dingy kerosene distilleries. The story of Baku and its oil-king, Ludwig Nobel, reads like a tale of the "Arabian Nights." Ten years ago the place was a sleepy Persian town; it is now a thriving city, owning more shipping than Cronstadt or Odessa, and the centre of a vast and rapidly increasing trade. But even in the thirteenth century the "sacred element" was so far robbed of its sanctity that the crude petroleum was extensively exported into various parts of Asia. In" The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian," edited by Colonel Yule, we read that On the confines towards Georgine there is a fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, inasmuch as a hundred shiploads might be taken from it at one time. This oil is not good to use with food, but 'tis good to burn, and is also used to anoint camels that By Charles The Region of the Eternal Fire. Marvin. London: Allen and Co., 1888. have the mange. People come from vast dis- | hundred feet. In America there are said tances to fetch it, for in all countries round to be twenty-five thousand drilled petro there is no other oil. The Russians drink it both as a cordial and medicine; but it does not intoxicate. If taken internally, it is said to be good for the stone as also for disorders of the breast. . . Externally applied it is of great use in scorbutic pains, gouts, cramps, etc., but it must be put to the part affected only; it penetrates instantaneously into the blood, and is apt for a short time to create pain. It has also the property of spirits of wine to take out greasy spots in silks or woollens, but the remedy is worse than the disease, for it leaves an abominable odor. They say it is carried into India as a great rarity, and being prepared as a japan is the most beautiful and lasting of any that has yet been found. leum wells, but a single Baku well has thrown up as much oil in a day as nearly the whole of the twenty-five thousand in America put together. Mr. Marvin thus describes one of these "spouting "wells: "In Pennsylvania that fountain would have made its owner's fortune; there's £5,000 worth of oil flowing out of the well every day. [The actual value was at least £11,200 a day.] Here it has made the owner a bankrupt. These words were addressed to me by an alongside a well that had burst the previous American petroleum engineer, as I stood morning, and out of which the oil was flying twice the height of the Great Geyser in Iceland, with a roar that could be heard several miles round. The fountain was a splendid spectacle—it was the largest ever known at Baku. The derrick itself was 70 feet high, and the oil and sand, after bursting through the roof and sides, flowed fully three times higher, forming a greyish-black fonntain, the column clearly defined on the southern side, but merging into a cloud of spray 30 yards broad on the other. . . . 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 worn half through by the friction, Since that time Baku and its wonders it got broadened out a little. Thence, conhave been frequently described, and the tinuing its course more than 200 feet high, it importance of the place with respect to curled over and fell in a dense cloud to the the central-Asian question has been re-ground on the north side, forming a sand-bank peatedly pointed out by such travellers as [from the amount of admixed sand], over Marsh, Valentine Baker, O'Donovan, and which the olive-colored oil ran in innumerable channels towards the lakes of petroleum that Arnold. Up to 1872 the extraction of the had been formed on the surrounding estates. oil was a monopoly, but in the following... Standing on the top of the sand-shoal, year it was thrown open to the world, and hundreds of wells have since been sunk, mainly by the energy of Swedes and Rus sians. Geologically speaking, practically nothing is known about this extraordinary district, and even the engineers who bore for the oil and work the wells are ignorant of the conditions which affect the supply of petroleum. At the present time there must be at least five hundred wells and fountains situated close together on less than a thousand acres of ground, but the sources seem to be absolutely independent of each other. The supply is simply (to use Dominie Sampson's word) "pro digious;" and every year, as the borings get deeper, the fountains become more prolific. These borings are nothing like so deep as in America; not a single Baku well has yet approached a depth of one thousand feet. In 1883 two flowing wells each sent out nearly thirty million gallons in less than a month from a depth of seven we could see where the oil, after flowing through a score of channels from the ooze, formed in the distance, on lower ground, a whole series of oil lakes, some broad enough and deep enough to row a boat in. Beyond this, the oil could be seen flowing away in a broad channel towards the sea. Flowing wells yielding from forty thousand to a hundred and sixty thousand gallons of oil daily are common in Baku, and the ordinary yield obtained by pumping is from ten thousand to twenty-five thousand gallons daily; and many of these pumping-wells have been worked for years without any diminution in the supply. A well belonging to Gospodin Kokereff had up to the date of Mr. Marvin's book produced sixty million gallons of oil, and the supply showed no sign of decreasing. The waste occasioned by spouting " is at times enormous; millions of gallons of oil being lost from the want of any storage accommodation. Occasionally the neigh 66 boring proprietors who happen to have within the next four years. The conduit reservoirs empty may thus obtain the oil is to have a forked line on the Black Sea, at a nominal price. On one occasion two reaching Batoum and Poti, and the capacmillion gallons were sold at about 74d. perity of the line is such as to admit of the ton. When the Droojba fountain "spout- daily passage of twelve hundred thousand ed," the crude article, we are told, alto-gallons of naphtha. In a few years, theregether lost its value for the moment. Fedoroff filled his reservoirs with 2,800,000 gallons of oil for 300 roubles, or £30. Thousands of tons were burnt outside the district to get rid of it; thousands were led towards the Caspian; huge lakes of oil were formed near the well, and on one occasion the liquid suddenly flowed into a distant enginehouse, and but for the promptness of the engineer in extinguishing his petroleum furnace the whole locality would have been ablaze. Houses were completely buried by the sand cast up by the oil; all efforts to stop the fountain on the part of Baku experts were fruit less. fore, this petroleum fuel will be scattered along the Mediterranean coasts and through southern Europe. Possibly we may have it burning in our own underground railway before long. Indeed, as Mr. Marvin tells us, we shall surely see the Parsee back again at Baku, not to worship the everlasting fire, but for the purpose of buying lamp-oil for the bazaars of India. What the effect of this intercourse will be on the future of India time will show. Meanwhile Russia is steadily making her way towards the gates of India, and Tchernayeff's road to central Asia will be an accomplished fact before many years are past; and since the discovery of the new springs near the Mervi Kultuk Bay, the railway to Khiva will possess its own supply of fuel. A few days ago Mr. G. Curzon read an interesting paper to the Royal Geographical Society on the Transcaspian Railway, which must have opened many people's eyes to the development of Russia's power in central Asia. In the mean time what are we doing with the sources of wealth in petroleum which we possess in upper Burmah? Along the valley of the Irrawadi, and within sixty miles of the Rangoon-Prome Railway, are enormous depos After great exertions on the part of the well-owners of the district, the fountain was eventually gagged, but not before five hundred thousand tons of oil had "spouted," equal to a loss at the current value of American petroleum of upwards of £1,000,000 sterling. But the record of the Droojba fountain was beaten in 1886, when a single well "spouted "as much as eleven thousand tons of petroleum per diem; an amount equal to the aggregate daily yield of the twenty-five thousand wells of America, the thousands of wells in Galicia, Roumania, and Burmah, and the shale-oil distilleries of Scotland and New South Wales. As a result the mar-its of petroleum, probably as copious as ket is now glutted, and the crude oil has been selling at times at the rate of fifty gallons for a penny! those of America, if not so rich as those of Baku, and certainly capable of supplying the whole of India with light and fuel. Perhaps those capitalists who are so eager to rush into the ruby mines of Burmah might more profitably devote their wealth to exploiting the petroleum springs of that country, for it needs not the gift of proph ecy to assert that Burmese petroleum in the long run will be certainly more precious than Burmese rubies. We have not space to indicate all the many points of Mr. Marvin's interesting narrative, or to do justice to his account of the economic results which he thinks must inevitably follow from the prodigious source of wealth which Russia possesses in this wonderful district. It must be remembered that petroleum ton for ton is more potent than coal as a source of We can heartily commend Mr. Marvin's power. Hundreds of immense floating book to all who are interested in the cencisterns driven by petroleum furnaces are tral-Asian question, for, as he says in the carrying this fuel across the Caspian and outset, petroleum is bound to become an up the Volga to be spread throughout important factor in that problem. HanniRussia and Germany, and along the Baltic bal was said to have dissolved the Alps by coasts. We learn from a recent consular vinegar. It is far more likely that petroreport that pipe lines are being laid from leum will dissolve the sort of Chinese Baku to Batoum; the Caspian and Black wall that our governments are feebly setSea Naphtha Conduit Company has now ting up to keep the Russian trader and the been formed, and the line is to be laid | tchinovnik out of India. T. E. THORpe. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |