NORTH WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE
CHAPTER I
AREAS AND BOUNDARIES
Introductory.—Of the provinces of India the Panjáb must always have a peculiar interest for Englishmen. Invasions by land from the west have perforce been launched across its great plains. The English were the first invaders who, possessing sea power, were able to outflank the mountain ranges which guard the north and west of India. Hence the Panjáb was the last, and not the first, of their Indian conquests, and the courage and efficiency of the Sikh soldiery, even after the guiding hand of the old Mahárája Ranjít Singh was withdrawn, made it also one of the hardest. The success of the early administration of the province, which a few years after annexation made it possible to use its resources in fighting men to help in the task of putting down the mutiny, has always been a matter of just pride, while the less familiar story of the conquests of peace in the first sixty years of British rule may well arouse similar feelings.
Scope of work.—A geography of the Panjáb will fitly embrace an account also of the North-West Frontier Province, which in 1901 was severed from it and formed into a separate administration, of the small area recently placed directly under the government of India on the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, and of the native states in political dependence on the Panjáb Government. It will also be convenient to include Kashmír and the tribal territory beyond the frontier of British India which is politically controlled from Pesháwar. The whole tract covers ten degrees of latitude and eleven of longitude. The furthest point of the Kashmír frontier is in 37° 2' N., which is much the same as the latitude of Syracuse. In the south-east the Panjáb ends at 27° 4' N., corresponding roughly to the position of the southernmost of the Canary Islands. Lines drawn west from Pesháwar and Lahore would pass to the north of Beirut and Jerusalem respectively. Multán and Cairo are in the same latitude, and so are Delhi and Teneriffe. Kashmír stretches eastwards to longitude 80° 3' and the westernmost part of Wazíristán is in 69° 2' E.
Distribution of Area.—The area dealt with is roughly 253,000 square miles. This is but two-thirteenths of the area of the Indian Empire, and yet it is less by only 10,000 square miles than that of Austria-Hungary including Bosnia and Herzegovina. The area consists of:
| sq. miles | ||
| (1) | The Panjáb | 97,000 |
| (2) | Native States dependent on Panjáb Government | 36,500 |
| (3) | Kashmír | 81,000 |
| (4) | North West Frontier Province | 13,000 |
| (5) | Tribal territory under the political control of the Chief Commissioner of North West Frontier Province, roughly | 25,500 |
Approximately 136,000 square miles may be classed as highlands and 117,000 as plains, and these may be distributed as follows over the above divisions:
| Highlands sq. miles | Plains sq. miles | ||
| (1) | Panjáb, British | 11,000 | 86,000 |
| (2) | Panjáb, Native States | 12,000 | 24,500 |
| (3) | Kashmír | 81,000 | — |
| (4) | North West Frontier Province | 6,500 | 6,500 |
| (5) | Tribal Territory | 25,500 | — |
On the north the highlands include the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan (Siwálik) tracts to the south and east of the Indus, and north of that river the Muztagh-Karakoram range and the bleak salt plateau beyond that range reaching almost up to the Kuenlun mountains. To the west of the Indus they include those spurs of the Hindu Kush which run into Chitrál and Dir, the Buner and Swát hills, the Safed Koh, the Wazíristán hills, the Sulimán range, and the low hills in the trans-Indus districts of the North West Frontier Province.
Boundary with China.—There is a point to the north of Hunza in Kashmír where three great mountain chains, the Muztagh from the south-east, the Hindu Kush from the south-west, and the Sarikol (an offshoot of the Kuenlun) from the north-east, meet. It is also the meeting-place of the Indian, Chinese, and Russian empires and of Afghánistán. Westwards from this the boundary of Kashmír and Chinese Turkestán runs for 350 miles (omitting curves) through a desolate upland lying well to the north of the Muztagh-Karakoram range. Finally in the north-east corner of Kashmír the frontier impinges on the great Central Asian axis of the Kuenlun. From this point it turns southwards and separates Chinese Tibet from the salt Lingzi Thang plains and the Indus valley in Kashmír, and the eastern part of the native state of Bashahr, which physically form a portion of Tibet.
Boundary with United Provinces.—The south-east corner of Bashahr is a little to the north of the great Kedárnáth peak in the Central Himálaya and of the source of the Jamna. Here the frontier strikes to the west dividing Bashahr from Teri Garhwál, a native state under the control of the government