Here its further progress southward is barred, and it is forced to turn to the east along the foot of the mountain, which it skirts for eight or ten miles, finally entering the small lake or marsh of El Melak, in which it loses itself after a source of about 80 miles.
The Orontes, the great river of Assyria, rises in the Buka'a--the deep valley known to the ancients as Coele-Syria Proper--springing from a number of small brooks, which flow down from the Antilibanus range between lat.

34 deg.

5' and lat.

34 deg.

12'.