We had wished to go from Tarsus to Antakia, formerly the capital of Syria, which in the days of its greatest splendor was known as “Antioch the Beautiful,” “The Crown of the East,” “The Metropolis and Eye of Christendom.” Here the followers of Christ were first called Christians and here for a long time was one of the most influential seats of the Christian Church. For generations it ranked next to Rome and Alexandria as the most important emporium in the great empire of the Cæsars. During a long period it was also the western terminus of the great trade route over which was borne _The wealth of Ormus and of Ind_ for distribution among the marts of Greece and Rome. But lack of time prevented us from visiting the scattered remains of this once famous city and we perforce boarded a train on the Bagdad Railway and started for Aleppo, whose history is in some respects scarcely less eventful than that of the erstwhile capital of the Seleucids. We left the Cilician Plain by way of the Bagdad Railroad, which took us over several well-constructed steel bridges and through a number of tunnels in the Amanus Range. One of these tunnels, said to be the longest in Turkey, is more than three miles in length. The roadbed, bridges, tunnels, stations, and rolling stock of this noted line compare favorably with those of the best railways in Europe and show, better than words, what great trade development in the Near East its projectors had in contemplation when they put their millions in the Bagdad Railroad. Will they ever receive any return for their stupendous investment? And, if so, when? Echo asks “When”? The scenery along the railroad in the Amanus Range and in the plain on the way to Aleppo is much like that of the Taurus Mountains and of Cilicia Campestris, where one can truly say with the poet Bryant _There is a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,_ _And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea._ Everywhere one comes upon places that are famous in history, both sacred and profane. Everywhere one passes through lands that during thousands of years, witnessed the devastations of Assyrians and Hittites, Persians and Greeks, Romans and Parthians, Mongols and Saracens and Turks. And everywhere are ruins of Christian temples and monasteries which recall the glories of the early Church, the triumphs of her martyrs, and which serve as silent reminders of the days when Roman governors persecuted the followers of the Crucified because they were regarded as dangerous to the Empire and when Sassanian satraps demanded their blood on the ground that they were the foes of the religion of Zoroaster. Of many of these houses of worship but little now remains except a few crumbling arches or disintegrating pillars and doorways. Of others all that is left is buried under a brush-covered tell where a half-famished goat is seeking a little sustenance or whence a Turkoman shepherd is watching his nearby flock.