The Excavation of Antioch - on - the - Orontes

IN Northern Syria the Orontes river, flowing almost due north through most of its course, makes a hair-pin turn when it reaches the wide plain in which lies the lake of Antioch, and proceeds southwest to the sea between the neutral grays and tans of mountains, through a green valley which might be a countryside in the south of France. Halfway down this southwestern course lies modern Antakia, a town optimistically estimated at a population of 35,000, the diminished souvenir of what was once the capital of the Near East.