Garhwál from Sirmúr and some of the smaller Simla Hill States. Henceforth the Jamna is with small exceptions the boundary between the Panjáb and the United Provinces.
Boundary with Afghánistán.—We must now return to our starting-point at the eastern extremity of the Hindu Kush, and trace the boundary with Afghánistán. The frontier runs west and south-west along the Hindu Kush to the Dorah pass dividing Chitrál from the Afghán province of Wakhan, and streams which drain into the Indus from the head waters of the Oxus. At the Dorah pass it turns sharply to the south, following a great spur which parts the valley of the Chitrál river (British) from that of its Afghán affluent, the Bashgol. Below the junction of the two streams at Arnawai the Chitrál changes its name and becomes the Kunar. Near this point the "Durand" line begins. In 1893 an agreement was made between the Amir Abdurrahman and Sir Mortimer Durand as representative of the British Government determining the frontier line from Chandak in the valley of the Kunar, twelve miles north of Asmar, to the Persian border. Asmar is an Afghán village on the left bank of the Kunar to the south of Arnawai. In 1894 the line was demarcated along the eastern watershed of the Kunar valley to Nawakotal on the confines of Bajaur and the country of the Mohmands.
Thence the frontier, which has not been demarcated, passes through the heart of the Mohmand country to the Kábul river and beyond it to our frontier post in the Khaibar at Landikhána.
From this point the line, still undemarcated, runs on in a south-westerly direction to the Safed Koh, and then strikes west along it to the Sikarám mountain near the Paiwar Kotal at the head of the Kurram valley. From Sikarám the frontier runs south and south-east crossing the upper waters of the Kurram, and dividing our possessions from the Afghán province of Khost. This line was demarcated in 1894.
At the south of the Kurram valley the frontier sweeps round to the west leaving in the British sphere the valley of the Tochí. Turning again to the south it crosses the upper waters of the Tochí and passes round the back of Wazíristán by the Shawal valley and the plains about Wána to Domandí on the Gomal river, where Afghánistán, Biluchistán, and the North West Frontier Province meet. The Wazíristán boundary was demarcated in 1895.
Political and Administrative Boundaries.—The boundary described above defines spheres of influence, and only in the Kurram valley does it coincide with that of the districts for whose orderly administration we hold ourselves responsible. All we ask of Wazírs, Afrídís, or Mohmands is to leave our people at peace; we have no concern with their quarrels or blood feuds, so long as they abide in their mountains or only leave them for the sake of lawful gain. Our administrative boundary, which speaking broadly we took over from the Sikhs, usually runs at the foot of the hills. A glance at the map will show that between Pesháwar and Kohát the territory of the independent tribes comes down almost to the Indus. At this point the hills occupied by the Jowákí section of the Afrídí tribe push out a great tongue eastwards. Our military frontier road runs through these hills, and we actually pay the tribesmen of the Kohát pass for our right of way. Another tongue of tribal territory reaches right down to the Indus, and almost severs the Pesháwar and Hazára districts. Further north the frontier of Hazára lies well to the east of the Indus.
Frontier with Biluchistán.—At Domandí the frontier turns to the east, and following the Gomal river to its junction with the Zhob at Kajúrí Kach forms the boundary of the two British administrations. Henceforth the general direction of the line is determined by the trend of the Sulimán range. It runs south to the Vehoa pass, where the country of the Patháns of the North West Frontier Province ends and that of the Hill and Plain Biluches subject to the Panjáb Government begins. From the Vehoa pass to the Kahá torrent the line is drawn so as to leave Biluch tribes with the Panjáb and Pathán tribes with the Biluchistán Agency. South of the Kahá the division is between Biluch tribes, the Marrís and Bugtís to the west being managed from Quetta, and the Gurchánís and Mazárís, who are largely settled in the plains, being included in Dera Gházi Khán, the trans-Indus district of the Panjáb. At the south-west corner of the Dera Ghází Khán district the Panjáb, Sind, and Biluchistán meet. From this point the short common boundary of the Panjáb and Sind runs east to the Indus.
The Southern Boundary.—East of the Indus the frontier runs south-east for about fifty miles parting Sind from the Baháwalpur State, till a point is reached where Sind, Rájputána, and Baháwalpur join. A little further to the east is the southern extremity of Baháwalpur at 70° 8' E. and 27° 5' N. From this point a line drawn due east would at a distance of 370 miles pass a few miles to the north of the south end of Gurgaon and a few miles to the south of the border of the Narnaul tract of Patiála. Between Narnaul and the south-east corner of the Baháwalpur State the great Rájputána desert, mainly occupied in this quarter by Bikaner, thrusts northwards a huge wedge reaching almost up to the Sutlej. To the west of the wedge is Baháwalpur and to the east the British district of Hissár. The apex is less than 100 miles from Lahore, while a line drawn due south from that city to latitude 27'5° north would exceed 270 miles in length. The Jaipur State lies to the south and west of Narnaul, while Gurgaon has across its southern frontiers Alwar and Bharatpur, and near the Jamna the Muttra district of the United Provinces.
CHAPTER II
MOUNTAINS, HILLS, AND PLAINS
The Great Northern Rampart.—The huge mountain rampart which guards the northern frontier of India thrusts out in the north-west a great bastion whose outer walls are the Hindu Kush and the Muztagh-Karakoram ranges. Behind the latter with a general trend from south-east to north-west are the great valley of the Indus to the point near Gilgit where it turns sharply to the south, and a succession of mountain chains and glens making up the Himalayan tract, through which the five rivers of the Panjáb and the Jamna find their way to the plains. To meet trans-Indus extensions of the Himálaya the Hindu Kush pushes out from its main axis great spurs to the south, flanking the valleys which drain into the Indus either directly or through the Kábul river.
The Himálaya.—Tibet, which from the point of view of physical geography includes a large and little known area in the Kashmír State to the north of the Karakoram range, is a lofty, desolate, wind swept plateau with a mean elevation of about 15,000 feet. In the part of it situated to the north of the north-west corner of Nipál lies the Manasarowar lake, in the neighbourhood of which three great Indian rivers, the Tsanpo or Brahmapútra, the Sutlej, and the Indus, take their rise. The Indus flows to the north-west for 500 miles and then turns abruptly to the south to seek its distant home in the Indian Ocean. The Tsanpo has a still longer course of 800 miles eastwards before it too bends southwards to flow through Assam into the Bay of Bengal. Between the points where these two giant rivers change their direction there extends for a distance of 1500 miles the vast congeries of mountain ranges known collectively as the "Himálaya" or "Abode of Snow." As a matter of convenience the name is sometimes confined to the mountains east of the Indus, but geologically the hills of Buner and Swát to the north of Pesháwar probably belong to the same system. In Sanskrit literature the Himalaya is also known as "Himavata," whence the classical Emodus.
The Kumáon Himálaya.—The Himálaya may be divided longitudinally into three sections, the eastern or Sikkim, the mid or Kumáon, and the north-western or Ladákh. With the first we are not concerned. The Kumáon section lies mainly in the United Provinces, but it includes the sources of the Jamna, and contains the chain in the Panjáb which is at once the southern watershed of the Sutlej and the great divide between the two river systems of Northern India, the Gangetic draining into the Bay of Bengal, and the Indus carrying the enormous discharge of the north-west Himálaya, the Muztagh-Karakoram,