But a stronger confirmation remains to be noticed. I have before shown how valuable is tradition, when, by common consent, Jew and Christian point to the same spot. In this case also the Jewish tradition agrees with that above mentioned. Dr. Chaplin tells me that the Jews still point out the knoll by the name Beth has Sekilah, “the Place of Stoning” (Domus lapidationis), and state it to be the ancient place of public execution which is mentioned in the Mishnah, and which was apparently well known at the time at which the tract Sanhedrim was written. Thus to “a green hill far away, beside a city wall,” we turn from the artificial rocks and marble slabs of the monkish Chapel of Calvary. I wish I could bring before the reader’s mind as vividly as it now rises in my memory, the appearance of this most interesting spot. The stony road comes out from the beautiful Damascus Gate, and runs beside the yellow cliff, in which are excavated caverns, perhaps once part of the great Cotton Grotto. Above the cliff, which is some thirty feet high, is the rounded knoll without any building on it, bare of trees, and in spring covered in part with scanty grass, while a great portion is occupied by a Moslem cemetery. To the north are olive-groves, to the west, beneath the knoll, is a garden, in which the remains of the Crusading Asnerie, or Hospice of the Templars, were found in 1875. From the knoll a view of the city, backed by the Moab hills, is obtained, and of the long white chalky ridge of Olivet dotted with olives. The place is bare and dusty, surrounded by stony ground and by heaps of rubbish, and exposed to the full glare of the summer sun. Such is the barren hillock which, by consent of Jewish and Christian tradition, is identified with the Place of Stoning, or of execution according to Jewish law. I have but a word in conclusion to add in support of these views. Immutability is the most striking law of Eastern life. The Bible becomes a living record to those who have heard in men’s mouths the very phrases of the Bible characters. The name of every village almost is Hebrew, each stands on the great dust-heap into which the ancient buildings beneath its present cabins have crumbled, and the old necropolis is cut in rock, near the modern site. For thousands of years the people have gone on living in the same way and in the same place, venerating (perhaps in ignorance) the same shrines, building their fortresses on the same vantage-ground.