In the first place, she occupied a convenient and highly strategic position on a great caravan route. She reposed in a natural amphitheatre, partially encompassed by precipitous hills of quartz and granite; touching her southern border lay the pleasant plains of Yemen, while her northern edge was overhung by the lowering rocks of Hejaz. The never-failing well, Zemzem, that gushed from her centre furnished an apparently inexhaustible supply of water for the passing trains of merchandise; it became a refreshing stopping place, and thus by degrees grew to be a focus for commerce. Crowds of traders, coming principally from Yemen, eventually located there and established the beginnings of a mercantile business: they collected the frontier customs, the hire for hauling produce, the dues arising from protection, and, in addition, they started various types of traffic among themselves. Orthodox Arabs, however, prefer to explain her superiority by giving more credit to her miraculous inception than to dry economic matters. According to them, when Hagar was expelled into the wilderness she chanced in her wanderings to come into the vale of Mecca. Both she and little Ishmael were almost overcome with thirst, when the child accidentally kicked the ground in a paroxysm of passion, and lo! a stream of pure water bubbled forth from the spot struck by his dainty toes. When Abraham heard of this miracle he visited the place, and, aided by his dutiful son Ishmael, now grown to manhood, built a sacred temple and instituted definite rites of pilgrimage. Inasmuch as the Arabs had mingled with the Hebrew race for many generations on matters of business, it was perhaps natural enough that they should have relied on the Jews for a superior facility in poetical imagination as well as a superior business credit.