thrown out of the gates, though still the number of the rest could not be discovered.”[164] It was in view of the detestable custom of burning human beings to Moloch in this valley, together with the perpetual fire kept burning to consume the filth from the city thrown here, that the latter Jews regarded it a fit emblem of hell, and applied the Greek name of the valley――Gehenna――to the place of future torments. The receptacle of the dead carcasses of beasts and of refuse matter, both animal and vegetable, here the worm sought its food, which, together with the perpetual fires of the vale, suggested to the Savior’s mind those solemn words, “Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”[165] And now, as if by appointment, a deep gloom hangs near this doomed spot, and the physical features of the valley reflect its horrid history. The gorge is deep and narrow, the cliffs are broken and barren, the hill on the north throws its shadow to meet below the deeper shades of the hill on the south, while the rocks are red as if scorched by eternal fires. The sides of the Hill of Evil Council, which rises from its southern side, are perforated with tombs, now the abode of shepherds and homeless wanderers. Midway up this hill is Aceldama, the “Potter’s Field,” the price of “thirty pieces of silver.”[166] Unmarked by boundaries, the field contains a gloomy vault, sixty feet square and thirty deep; over it is a long massive building of stone, with an arched roof, but open at each end, and on the bottom lay the bones of some poor stranger. Strangely inclined to invest all things connected with New Testament history with the supernatural, the monks assert that the soil of this field possesses the rare power of reducing dead bodies to a perfect mould in the brief space of twenty-four hours; and, according to early writers, the Empress Helena caused 270 ship-loads of it to be removed to Rome, where it was deposited in the Campo Santo, and where it preserved the bodies of the Romans, but consumed those of strangers dying in the Eternal City. On the summit of the hill is a small Latin chapel, standing on the legendary site of the “country house of Annas,” in which the Jews conspired against Jesus, and from their “evil council” the hill takes its name. Within the court of the chapel is the traditional olive-tree on which “Judas hanged himself.”[167] It is gnarled, pealed, and split, and is the most villainous-looking tree that ever offended human sight.