HE traveler starting overland from the port of Alexandretta, In northern Syria, beholds beyond the high pass of Beilan the widely extended plain of Antioch, a View surprising in novelty and Charm. As far as the eye can reach the plain is strewn with mounds of varying height, often grass-covered, their artificial origin easily discernible. These mysterious elevations, called by the Arabs Tell, by the Turks Tepe, accompany the traveler to Aleppo and even farther to the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, ' and they constantly increase in height, extent, and number, from Mosul down the stream and through Babylonia, crossing into the Elamite plain and to, Susa. They are the marks 'of the Civilisation Of pre-christian millenniums. The large and small cities of the oldest empires of western Asia, of the Hittite states of northern Syria, of the Assy rian, Babylonian, and Elamite empires, with their palaces and tem ples, walls and gates, terraces and towers, lie buried beneath them.

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