women and children encamped within British territory on our border, and their arms in the keeping of our frontier political officials, the Powindah makes his way southwards with his camel loads of fruit and silk, bales of camel and goat hair or sheepskin goods, carpets and other merchandise from Kábul and Bokhára, and conveys himself through the length and breadth of the Indian peninsula. … He returns yearly to the cool summits of the Afghán hills and the open grassy plains, where his countless flocks of sheep and camels are scattered for the summer grazing" (Holdich's India, pp. 80–81).
Physical features of hilly country between Pesháwar and the Gomal river.—The physical features of the hill country between Pesháwar and the Gomal pass may best be described in the words of Sir Thomas Holdich:
"Natural landscape beauty, indeed, may here be measured to a certain extent by altitude. The low ranges of sun-scorched, blackened ridge and furrow formation which form the approaches to the higher altitudes of the Afghán upland, and which are almost as regularly laid out by the hand of nature in some parts of the frontier as are the parallels … of the engineer who is besieging a fortress—these are by no means 'things of beauty,' and it is this class of formation and this form of barren desolation that is most familiar to the frontier officer. … Shades of delicate purple and grey will not make up for the absence of the living green of vegetation. … But with higher altitudes a cooler climate and snow-fed soil is found, and as soon as vegetation grasps a root-hold there is the beginning of fine scenery. The upper pine-covered slopes of the Safed Koh are as picturesque as those of the Swiss Alps; they are crowned by peaks whose wonderful altitudes are frozen beyond the possibility of vegetation, and are usually covered with snow wherever snow can lie. In Wazíristán, hidden away in the higher recesses of its great mountains, are many valleys of great natural beauty, where we find the spreading poplar and the ilex in all the robust growth of an indigenous flora. … Among the minor valleys Birmal perhaps takes precedence by right of its natural beauty. Here are stretches of park-like scenery where grass-covered slopes are dotted with clumps of deodár and pine and intersected with rivulets hidden in banks of fern; soft green glades open out to view from every turn in the folds of the hills, and above them the silent watch towers of Pírghal and Shuidár … look down from their snow-clad heights across the Afghán uplands to the hills beyond Ghazní." (Holdich's India, pp. 81–82.)
The Sulimán Range.—A well-marked mountain chain runs from the Gomal to the extreme south-west corner of the Dera Ghází Khán district where the borders of Biluchistán, Sind, and the Panjáb meet. It culminates forty miles south of the Gomal in the fine Kaisargarh mountain (11,295 feet), which is a very conspicuous object from the plains of the Deraját. On the side of Kaisargarh there is a shrine called Takht i Sulimán or Throne of Solomon, and this is the name by which Englishmen usually know the mountain, and which has been passed on to the whole range. Proceeding southwards the general elevation of the chain drops steadily. But Fort Munro, the hill station of the Dera Ghází Khán district, 200 miles south of the Takht, still stands 6300 feet above sea level, and it looks across at the fine peak of Ekbhai, which is more than 1000 feet higher. In the south of the Dera Ghází Khán district the general level of the chain is low, arid the Giandári hill, though only 4160 feet above the sea, stands out conspicuously. Finally near where the three jurisdictions meet the hills melt into the Kachh Gandáva plain. Sir Thomas Holdich's description of the rugged Pathán hills applies also to the Sulimán range. Kaisargarh is a fine limestone mountain crowned by a forest of the edible chilgoza pine. But the ordinary tree growth, where found at all, is of a much humbler kind, consisting of gnarled olives and dwarf palms.
Passes and torrents in Sulimán Hills.—The drainage of the western slopes of the Sulimán range finding no exit on that side has had to wear out ways for itself towards the plains which lie between the foot of the hills and the Indus. This is the explanation of the large number of passes, about one hundred, which lead from the plains into the Sulimán hills. The chief from north to south are the Vehoa, the Sangarh, the Khair, the Kahá, the Cháchar, and the Sirí, called from the torrents which flow through them to the plains. There is an easy route through the Cháchar to Biluchistán. But unfortunately the water of the torrent is brackish.
Sub Himálaya or Siwáliks.—In its lowest ridges the Himálaya drops to a height of about 5000 feet. But the traveller to any of the summer resorts in the mountains passes through a zone of lower hills interspersed sometimes with valleys or "duns." These consist of Tertiary sandstones, clays, and boulder conglomerates, the débris in fact which the Himálaya has dropped in the course of ages. To this group of hills and valleys the general name of Siwáliks is given. East of the Jhelam it includes the Náhan hills to the north of Ambála, the low hills of Kángra, Hoshyárpur, Gurdáspur, and Jammu, and the Pábbí hills in Gujrát. But it is to the west of the Jhelam that the system has its greatest extension. Practically the whole of the soil of the plains of the Attock, Ráwalpindi, and Jhelam districts consists of disintegrated Siwálik sandstone, and differs widely in appearance and agricultural quality from the alluvium of the true Panjáb plains. The low hills of these districts belong to the same system, but the Salt Range is only in part Siwálik. Altogether Siwálik deposits in the Panjáb cover an area of 13,000 square miles. Beyond the Indus the hills of the Kohát district and a part of the Sulimán range are of Tertiary age.
The Great Panjáb Plain.—The passage from the highlands to the plains is as a rule abrupt, and the contrast between the two is extraordinary. This is true without qualification of the tract between the Jamna and the Jhelam. It is equally true of British districts west of the Jhelam and south of the Salt Range and of lines drawn from Kálabágh on the west bank of the Indus southwards to Paniála and thence north-west through the Pezu pass to the Wazíristán hills. In all that vast plain, if we except the insignificant hills in the extreme south-west of the province ending to the north in the historic ridge at Delhi, some hillocks of gneiss near Toshám in Hissár, and the curious little isolated rocks at Kirána, Chiniot, and Sángla near the Chenáb and Jhelam, the only eminences are petty ridges of windblown sand and the "thehs" or mounds which represent the accumulated débris of ancient village sites. At the end of the Jurassic period and later this great plain was part of a sea bed. Far removed as the Indian ocean now is the height above sea level of the Panjáb plain east of the Jhelam is nowhere above 1000 feet. Delhi and Lahore are both just above the 700 feet line. The hills mentioned above are humble time-worn outliers of the very ancient Aravalli system, to which the hills of Rájputána belong. Kirána and Sángla were already of enormous age, when they were islands washed by the waves of the Tertiary sea. A description of the different parts of the vast Panjáb plain, its great stretches of firm loam, and its tracts of sand and sand hills, which the casual observer might regard as pure desert, will be given in the paragraphs devoted to the different districts.
The Salt Range.—The tract west of the Jhelam, and bounded on the south by the Salt Range cis-Indus, and trans-Indus by the lines mentioned above, is of a more varied character. Time worn though the Salt Range has become by the waste of ages, it still rises at Sakesar, near its western extremity, to a height of 5000 feet. The eastern part of the range is mostly in the Jhelam district, and there the highest point is Chail (3700 feet). The hill of Tilla (3242 feet), which is a marked feature of the landscape looking westwards from Jhelam cantonment, is on a spur running north-east from the main chain. The Salt Range is poorly wooded, the dwarf acacia or phuláhí (Acacia modesta), the olive, and the sanattha shrub (Dodonea viscosa) are the commonest species. But these jagged and arid hills include some not infertile valleys, every inch of which is put under crop by the crowded population. To geologists the range is of special interest, including as it does at one end of the scale Cambrian beds of enormous antiquity and at the other rocks of Tertiary age. Embedded in the Cambrian strata there are great deposits of rock salt at Kheora, where the Mayo mine is situated. At Kálabágh the Salt Range reappears on the far side of the Indus. Here the salt comes to the surface, and its jagged pinnacles present a remarkable appearance.
Country north of the Salt Range.—The country to the north of the Salt Range included in the districts of Jhelam, Ráwalpindí, and Attock is often ravine-bitten and seamed with the white sandy beds of torrents. Generally speaking it is an arid precarious tract, but there are