Along the border of the torrent a few shrubs grow, and gazelles descend to drink of its limpid waters. Fifteen miles to the south, on a summit 3000 feet above the sea, stands the ancient city of Kerak, containing more than 3000 inhabitants, about equally divided into Christians and Moslems, which is renowned in the history of Jewish wars as the city whose king, in a moment of desperation, rather than surrender to King Jehoram, offered up his eldest son upon the town wall as a burnt-sacrifice, so disgusting the Israelites as to compel them to raise the siege.[311] From the mountain of Kerak a wild ravine leads down to the reputed ruins of Zoar, near the shore, to which Lot fled when commanded to fly to the mountains above.[312] To the southwest from the ruins of Zoar stood Sodom and Gomorrah, with their companion cities of the plain. Covering a large area of what was once dry land, the sea is here exceedingly shallow, and the plains bordering on the southern coast give evidence of their former fertility. These cities must have occupied this section of the vale, or it would have been impossible for Abraham to have seen the conflagration from Hebron, sixteen miles to the northwest.[313] But not a vestige of those renowned cities remains to designate the scene of their glory and shame. The “rain of fire” was probably a shower of nitrous particles ignited by the electric flash, which, as it fell, kindled to a flame the buildings of the cities, constructed of bituminous stones and cemented by green asphalt. Formed of such combustible materials, the conflagration of the towns must have raged with unwonted fury, and the descending fire, wrapping vale and mountain in a winding-sheet of flame, must have precluded the possibility of escape. But the preservation of Zoar amid the general burning was a miracle of the highest order. Standing within the vale and hard by the neighboring towns, but without the smell of fire about its dwellings, it must have presented a singular spectacle, surrounded by an invisible wall against which the burning waves madly dashed in vain.