OCR Text |
Show Find Lost City of Apollonia in Albania Ponya, Albania. Few readers are young enough to have studied the geography of the new kingdom of Albania left by the war. This young country Is trying to drain the fever-laden fever-laden marshes by the blue Adriatic sea and make farming land of them. Rome of the Imperial armies had all that here 1,500 years ago Their Imperial city of Apollonia was here somewhere near the present wretched hamlet of Ponya. Ancient carved and Inscribed stones are found encased in the cabin walls of the peasants shaking shak-ing with chills nnd fever. There Is also a Greek monastery with brick Byzantine arches of early Christianity Chris-tianity and carved stones of the Macedon of Alexander the Great. The Austrian bombs of the war made short work of what time and fever had not ruined utterly. So human curiosity has been look Ing here for Apollonia, lost imperial impe-rial city. There were cavernous sounds from underground. "There the monks buried us and their owu dead," whispered the awe-sticken peasants. A trench was dug and, lo and behold, the lost city of the great Alexander and Roman emperors! Fouudutions and carved columns, statues of lovely goddesses, all mixed In with tombs of 2.000 years and the canals to drain the marble basin of the waters which have made the marshes by agelong age-long neglect. M. Leon Rey Is directing the excavations ex-cavations of the French archeolog ical mission here. |