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THE PANJAB, NORTH-WEST
FRONTIER PROVINCE
AND KASHMIR

BY

SIR JAMES DOUIE, M.A., K.C.S.I.

SEEMA PUBLICATIONS C-3/19, R. P. Bagh, Delhi-110007.
First Indian Edition 1974
Printed in India at Deluxe Offset Press, Daya Basti, Delhi-110035 and
Published by Seema Publications, Delhi-110007.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

In his opening chapter Sir James Douie refers to the fact that the area treated in this volume—just one quarter of a million square miles—is comparable to that of Austria-Hungary. The comparison might be extended; for on ethnographical, linguistic and physical grounds, the geographical unit now treated is just as homogeneous in composition as the Dual Monarchy. It is only in the political sense and by force of the ruling classes, temporarily united in one monarch, that the term Osterreichisch could be used to include the Poles of Galicia, the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia, the Szeklers, Saxons and more numerous Rumanians of Transylvania, the Croats, Slovenes and Italians of "Illyria," with the Magyars of the Hungarian plain.

The term Punjábi much more nearly, but still imperfectly, covers the people of the Panjáb, the North-West Frontier Province, Kashmír and the associated smaller Native States. The Sikh, Muhammadan and Hindu Jats, the Kashmírís and the Rájputs all belong to the tall, fair, leptorrhine Indo-Aryan main stock of the area, merging on the west and south-west into the Biluch and Pathán Turko-Iranian, and fringed in the hill districts on the north with what have been described as products of the "contact metamorphism" with the Mongoloid tribes of Central Asia. Thus, in spite of the inevitable blurring of boundary lines, the political divisions treated together in this volume, form a fairly clean-cut geographical unit.

Sir James Douie, in this work, is obviously living over again the happy thirty-five years which he devoted to the service of North-West India: his accounts of the physiography, the flora and fauna, the people and the administration are essentially the personal recollections of one who has first studied the details as a District Officer and has afterwards corrected his perspective, stage by stage, from the successively higher view-point of a Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, Financial Commissioner, and finally as Officiating Lieut.-Governor. No one could more appropriately undertake the task of an accurate and well-proportioned thumb-nail sketch of North-West India and, what is equally important to the earnest reader, no author could more obviously delight in his subject.

T. H. H.

Alderley Edge,
March 9th, 1916.

NOTE BY AUTHOR

My thanks are due to the Government of India for permission to use illustrations contained in official publications. Except where otherwise stated the numerous maps included in the volume are derived from this source. My obligations to provincial and district gazetteers have been endless. Sir Thomas Holdich kindly allowed me to reproduce some of the charts in his excellent book on India. The accuracy of the sections on geology and coins may be relied on, as they were written by masters of these subjects, Sir Thomas Holland and Mr R. B. Whitehead, I.C.S. Chapter XVII could not have been written at all without the help afforded by Mr Vincent Smith's Early History of India. I have acknowledged my debts to other friends in the "List of Illustrations."

J. M. D.

8 May 1916.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I

AREAS AND BOUNDARIES

Fig. 1. Arms of Panjáb.

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:

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:

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 of the United Provinces. Turning again to the south it runs to the junction of the Tons and Jamna, separating Teri 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.

Fig. 2. Orographical Map.
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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, and the Hindu Kush ranges into the Indian Ocean. Simla stands on the south-western end of this watershed, and below it the Himálaya drops rapidly to the Siwálik foot-hills and to the plains. Jakko, the deodár-clad hill round which so much of the life of the summer capital of India revolves, attains a height of 8000 feet. The highest peak within a radius of 25 miles of Simla is the Chor, which is over 12,000 feet high, and does not lose its snow cap till May. Hattu, the well-known hill above Narkanda, which is 40 miles from Simla by road, is 1000 feet lower. But further west in Bashahr the higher peaks range from 16,000 to 22,000 feet.

Fig. 3. Nanga Parvat.

The Inner Himálaya or Zánskar Range.—The division of the Himálaya into the three sections named above is convenient for descriptive purposes. But its chief axis runs through all the sections. East of Nipál it strikes into Tibet not very far from the source of the Tsanpo, is soon pierced by the gorge of the Sutlej, and beyond it forms the southern watershed of the huge Indus valley. In the west this great rampart is known as the Zánskar range. For a short distance it is the boundary between the Panjáb and Kashmír, separating two outlying portions of the Kángra district, Lahul and Spití, from Ladákh. In this section the peaks are from 19,000 to 21,000 feet high, and the Baralácha pass on the road from the Kulu valley in Kángra to Leh, the capital of Ladákh, is at an elevation of about 16,500 feet. In Kashmír the Zánskar or Inner Himálaya divides the valley of the Indus from those of the Chenáb and Jhelam. It has no mountain to dispute supremacy with Everest (29,000 feet), or Kinchinjunga in the Eastern Himálaya, but the inferiority is only relative. The twin peaks called Nun and Kun to the east of Srínagar exceed 23,000 feet, and in the extreme north-west the grand mountain mass of Nanga Parvat towers above the Indus to a height of 26,182 feet. The lowest point in the chain is the Zojilá (11,300 feet) on the route from Srínagar, the capital of Kashmír, to Leh on the Indus

The road from Srínagar to Gilgit passes over the Burzil pass at an elevation of 13,500 feet.

The Zojilá is at the top of the beautiful valley of the Sind river, a tributary of the Jhelam. The lofty Zánskar range blocks the inward flow of the monsoon, and once the Zojilá is crossed the aspect of the country entirely changes. The land of forest glades and green pastures is left behind, and a region of naked and desolate grandeur begins.

"The waste of snow ... is the frontier of barren Tibet, where sandy wastes replace verdant meadows, and where the wild ridges, jutting up against the sky, are kept bare of vegetation, their strata crumbling under the destructive action of frost and water, leaving bare ribs of gaunt and often fantastic outline.... The colouring of the mountains is remarkable throughout Ladákh and nowhere more so than near the Fotulá (a pass on the road to Leh to the south of the Indus gorge).... As we ascend the peaks suggest organ pipes, so vertical are the ridges, so jagged the ascending outlines. And each pipe is painted a different colour ... pale slate green, purple, yellow, grey, orange, and chocolate, each colour corresponding with a layer of the slate, shale, limestone, or trap strata" (Neve's Picturesque Kashmir, pp. 108 and 117).

Fig. 4. Burzil Pass.

In all this desolation there are tiny oases where level soil and a supply of river water permit of cultivation and of some tree growth.

Water divide near Baralácha and Rotang Passes in Kulu.—We have seen that the Indus and its greatest tributary, the Sutlej, rise beyond the Himálaya in the Tibetan plateau. The next great water divide is in the neighbourhood of the Baralácha pass and the Rotang pass, 30 miles to the south of it. The route from Simla to Leh runs at a general level of 7000 to 9000 feet along or near the Sutlej-Jamna watershed to Narkanda (8800 feet). Here it leaves the Hindustán-Tibet road and drops rapidly into the Sutlej gorge, where the Lurí bridge is only 2650 feet above sea level. Rising steeply on the other side the Jalaurí pass on the watershed between the Sutlej and the Biás is crossed at an elevation of 10,800 feet. A more gradual descent brings the traveller to the Biás at Lárjí, 3080 feet above sea level. The route then follows the course of the Biás through the beautiful Kulu valley to the Rotang pass (13,326 feet), near which the river rises. The upper part of the valley is flanked on the west by the short, but very lofty Bara Bangáhal range, dividing Kulu from Kángra and the source of the Biás from that of the Ráví. Beyond the Rotang is Lahul, which is divided by a watershed from Spití and the torrents which drain into the Sutlej. On the western side of this watershed are the sources of the Chandra and Bhága, which unite to form the river known in the plains as the Chenáb.

Mid Himálaya or Pangí Range.—The Mid Himálayan or Pangí range, striking west from the Rotang pass and the northern end of the Bara Bangáhal chain, passes through the heart of Chamba dividing the valley of the Chenáb (Pangí) from that of the Ráví. After entering Kashmír it crosses the Chenáb near the Kolahoi cone (17,900 feet) and the head waters of the Jhelam. Thence it continues west over Haramukh (16,900 feet), which casts its shadow southwards on the Wular lake, to the valley of the Kishnganga, and probably across it to the mountains which flank the magnificent Kágan glen in Hazâra.

Fig. 5. Rotang Pass.

Fig. 6. Mt Haramukh.

Outer Himálaya or Dhauladhár-Pir Panjál Range.—The Outer Himálaya also starts from a point near the Rotang pass, but some way to the south of the offset of the Mid Himalayan chain. Its main axis runs parallel to the latter, and under the name of the Dhauladhár (white ridge) forms the boundary of the Chamba State and Kángra, behind whose headquarters, at Dharmsála it stands up like a huge wall. It has a mean elevation of 15,000 feet, but rises as high as 16,000. It passes from Chamba into Bhadarwáh in Kashmír, and crossing the Chenáb is carried on as the Pír Panjál range through the south of that State. With an elevation of only 14,000 or 15,000 feet it is a dwarf as compared with the giants of the Inner Himalayan and Muztagh-Karakoram chains. But it hides them from the dwellers in the Panjáb, and its snowy crest is a very striking picture as seen in the cold weather from the plains of Ráwalpindí, Jhelam, and Gujrát. The Outer Himálaya is continued beyond the gorges of the Jhelam and Kishnganga rivers in Kajnág and the hills of the Hazára district. Near the eastern extremity of the Dhauladhár section of the Outer Himálaya it sends out southwards between Kulu and Mandí a lower offshoot. This is crossed by the Babbu (9480 feet) and Dulchí passes, connecting Kulu with Kángra through Mandí. Geologically the Kulu-Mandí range appears to be continued to the east of the Biás and across the Sutlej over Hattu and the Chor to the hills near Masúrí (Mussoorie), a well-known hill station in the United Provinces. Another offshoot at the western end of the Dhauladhár passes through the beautiful hill station of Dalhousie, and sinks into the low hills to the east of the Ráví, where it leaves Chamba and enters the British district of Gurdáspur.

River Valleys and Passes in the Himálaya.—While these principal chains can be traced from south-east to north-west over hundreds of miles it must be remembered that the Himálaya is a mountain mass from 150 to 200 miles broad, that the main axes are linked together by subsidiary cross chains dividing the head waters of great rivers, and flanked by long and lofty ridges running down at various angles to the gorges of these streams and their tributaries. The typical Himalayan river runs in a gorge with mountains dipping down pretty steeply to its sides. The lower slopes are cultivated, but the land is usually stony and uneven, and as a whole the crops are not of a high class. The open valleys of the Jhelam in Kashmír and of the Biás in Kulu are exceptions. Passes in the Himálaya are not defiles between high cliffs, but cross the crest of a ridge at a point where the chain is locally depressed, and snow melts soonest. In the Outer and Mid Himálaya the line of perpetual snow is at about 16,000 feet, but for six months of the year the snow-line comes down 5000 feet lower. In the Inner Himálaya and the Muztagh-Karakoram, to which the monsoon does not penetrate, the air is so dry that less snow falls and the line is a good deal higher.

Fig. 7. R. Jhelam in Kashmír—View towards Mohand Marg.

Himalayan Scenery.—Certain things strike any observant traveller in the Himálaya. One is the comparative absence of running or still water, except in the height of the rainy season, away from the large rivers. The slope is so rapid that ordinary falls of rain run off with great rapidity. The mountain scenery is often magnificent and the forests are beautiful, but the absence of water robs the landscape of a charm which would make it really perfect. Where this too is present, as in the valley of the Biás in Kulu and those of the Jhelam and its tributaries in Kashmír and Hazára, the eye has its full fruition of content. Another is the silence of the forests. Bird and beast are there, but they are little in evidence. A third feature which can hardly be missed is the contrast between the northern and the southern slopes. The former will often be clothed with forest while the latter is a bare stony slope covered according to season with brown or green grass interspersed with bushes of indigo, barberry, or the hog plum (Prinsepia utilis). The reason is that the northern side enjoys much more shade, snow lies longer, and the supply of moisture is therefore greater. The grazier for the same reason is less tempted to fire the hill side in order to promote the growth of grass, a practice which is fatal to all forest growth. The rich and varied flora of the Himálaya will be referred to later.

Fig. 8. Near Náran in Kágan Glen, Hazára.

Muztagh-Karakoram Ranges.—The Muztagh-Karakoram mountains form the northern watershed of the Indus. The range consists of more than one main axis. The name Karakoram is appropriated to the eastern part of the system which originates at E. longitude 79° near the Pangong lake in the Tibetan plateau a little beyond the boundary of Kashmír. Beyond the Karakoram pass (18,550 ft.) is a lofty bleak upland with salt lakes dotted over its surface. Through this inhospitable region and over the Karakoram pass and the Sasser-lá (17,500 ft.) the trade route from Yarkand to Leh runs. The road is only open for three months in the year, and the dangers and hardships are great. In 1898 Dr Bullock Workman and his wife marched along it across the Shyok river, up the valley of the Nubra, and over the Sasser-lá to the Karakoram pass. The scenery is an exaggeration of that described by Dr Neve as seen on the road from the Zoji-lá to Leh. There is a powerful picture of its weird repellent grandeur in the Workmans' book entitled In the Ice World of Himálaya (pp. 28-29, 30-32). The poet who had found ideas for a new Paradiso in the Vale of Kashmír might here get suggestions for a new Inferno.

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Fig. 9. Muztagh-Karakoram and Himalayan Ranges in Kashmír.

The Karakoram range culminates in the north-west near the Muztagh pass in a group of majestic peaks including K 2 or Mount Godwin Austen (28,265 feet), Gasherbrum, and Masherbrum, which tower over and feed the vast Boltoro glacier. The first of these giants is the second largest mountain in the world. The Duke of the Abruzzi ascended it to the height of 24,600 feet, and so established a climbing record. The Muztagh chain carries on the northern bastion to the valley of the Hunza river and the western extremity of the Hindu Kush. It has several peaks exceeding 25,000 feet. The most famous is Rakiposhi which looks down on Hunza from a height of 25,550 feet.

The Hindu Kush.—The Muztagh chain from the south-east, the Sarikol from the north-east, and the Hindu Kush from the south-west, meet at a point to the north of Hunza. The last runs westward and south-westward for about 200 miles to the Dorah pass (14,800 feet), separating the valleys which drain into the Indus from the head waters of the Oxus, and Hunza and Gilgit in Kashmír and Chitrál in British India from the Afghán province of Wakhan. The highest point in the main axis, Sad Istragh (24,171 feet), is in this section. But the finest mountain scenery in the Hindu Kush is in the great spurs it thrusts out southwards to flank the glens which feed the Gilgit and Chitrál rivers. Tirach Mír towers above Chitrál to a height of 25,426 feet. From Tibet to the Dorah pass the northern frontier of India is impregnable. It is pierced by one or two difficult trade routes strewn with the bones of pack animals, but no large army has ever marched across it for the invasion of India. West of the Dorah pass the general level of the Hindu Kush is a good deal lower than that of its eastern section. The vital point in the defences of India in this quarter lies near Charikár to the north of Kábul, where the chain thins out, and three practicable passes debouch on the valley of the Kábul river. It is this fact that gives the town of Kábul its great strategic importance. The highest of the three passes, the Kaoshan or Hindu Kush (dead Hindu), crosses the chain at an elevation of 14,340 feet. It took its own name from the fate that befel a Hindu army when attempting to cross it, and has handed it on to the whole range. It is the pass which the armies of Alexander and Bábar used. The historical road for the invasion of India on this side has been by Charikár and the valley of the Kábul river to its junction with the Kunar below Jalálábád, thence up the Kunar valley and over one of the practicable passes which connect its eastern watershed with the Panjkora and Swát river valleys, whence the descent on Pesháwar is easy. This is the route by which Alexander led the wing of the Grecian army which he commanded in person, and the one followed by Bábar in 1518-19. Like Alexander, Bábar fought his way through Bajaur, and crossed the Indus above Attock.

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Fig. 10. The Khaibar Road.

The Khaibar.—A British force advancing on Kábul from Pesháwar has never marched by the Kunar and Kábul valley route. It has always taken the Khaibar road, which only follows the Kabul river for less than one-third of the 170 miles which separate Pesháwar from the Amir's capital. The military road from Pesháwar to Landikhána lies far to the south of the river, from which it is shut off by difficult and rugged country held by the Mohmands.

Safed Koh.—From Landikhána the political boundary runs south-west to the Safed Koh (white mountain) and is continued westwards along that range to the Paiwar Kotal or pass (8450 feet). The Safed Koh forms the watershed of the Kábul and Kurram rivers. It is a fine pine clad chain with a general level of 12,000 feet, and its skyline is rarely free from snow. It culminates in the west near Paiwar Kotal in Sikarám (15,620 feet). To the west of the Pesháwar and Kohát districts is a tangle of hills and valleys formed by outlying spurs of the Safed Koh. This difficult country is in the occupation of Afrídís and Orakzais, who are under our political control.

The Kurram Valley.—The line of advance into Afghánistán through the Kurram valley is easy, and Lord Roberts used it when he marched towards Kábul in 1898. After the war we annexed the valley, leaving however the head waters of the Kurram in Afghán territory. The road to Kábul leaves the river far to the south before it crosses our frontier at Paiwar Kotal.

Wazíristán Hills.—Between the Kurram valley and the Gomal river is a large block of very rough mountainous country known as Wazíristán from the turbulent clan which occupies it. In the north it is drained by the Tochí. Westwards of the Tochí valley the country rises into lofty mountains. The upper waters of the Tochí and its affluents drain two fine glens known as Birmal and Shawal to the west of the country of the Mahsud Wazírs. The Tochí valley is the direct route from India to Ghazní, and nine centuries ago, when that decayed town was the capital of a powerful kingdom, it must often have heard the tramp of armed men. The loftiest peaks in Wazíristán, Shuidár (11,000 feet) and Pírghal (11,600 feet), overhang Birmal. Further south, Wána, our post in south-west Wazíristán, overlooks from its plateau the Gomal valley.

The Gomal Pass as a trade route.—East of Kajúrí Kach the Gomal flows through tribal territory to the Gomal pass from which it debouches into the plains of the Dera Ismail Khán district. "The Gomal route is the oldest of all trade routes. Down it there yearly pours a succession of káfilas (caravans) led and followed up by thousands of well-armed Pathán traders, called Powindahs, from the plains of Afghánistán to India. The Powindahs mostly belong to the Ghilzai tribes, and are not therefore true Afgháns[1]. Leaving their 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 fertile stretches which will be mentioned in the descriptions of the districts. The general height of the plains north of the Salt Range is from 1000 feet to 2000 feet above sea level. The rise between Lahore and Ráwalpindí is just over a thousand feet. Low hills usually form a feature of the landscape, pleasing at a distance or when softened by the evening light, but bare and jagged on a nearer view. The chief hills are the Márgalla range between Hazára and Ráwalpindí, the Kálachitta and the Khairimurat hills running east and west through Attock and the very dry and broken Narrara hills on the right bank of the Indus in the same district. Between the Márgalla and Kálachitta hills is the Márgalla pass on the main road from Ráwalpindí to the passage of the Indus at Attock, and therefore a position of considerable strategical importance. The Kálachitta (black and white) chain is so called because the north side is formed of nummulitic limestone and the south mainly of a dark purple sandstone. The best tree-growth is therefore on the north side.

Pesháwar, Kohát, and Bannu.—Across the Indus the Pesháwar and Bannu districts are basins ringed with hills and drained respectively by the Kábul and Kurram rivers with their affluents. Between these two basins lies the maze of bare broken hills and valleys which make up the Kohát district. The cantonment of Kohát is 1700 feet above sea level and no hill in the district reaches 5000 feet. Near the Kohát border in the south-west of the Pesháwar district are the Khattak hills, the culmination of which at Ghaibana Sir has a height of 5136 feet, and the military sanitarium of Cherát in the same chain is 600 feet lower. On the east the Maidáni hills part Bannu from Isakhel, the trans-Indus tahsíl of Mianwáli, and on the south the Marwat hills divide it from Dera Ismail Khán. Both are humble ranges. The highest point in the Marwat hills is Shekhbudín, a bare and dry limestone rock rising to an elevation of over 4500 feet.

CHAPTER III

RIVERS

The Panjáb Rivers.—"Panjáb" is a Persian compound word, meaning "five waters," and strictly speaking the word denotes the country between the valley of the Jhelam and that of the Sutlej. The intermediate rivers from west to east are the Chenáb, the Ráví, and the Biás. Their combined waters at last flow into the Panjnad or "five rivers" at the south-west corner of the Multán district, and the volume of water which 44 miles lower down the Panjnad carries into the Indus is equal to the discharge of the latter. The first Aryan settlers knew this part of India as the land of the seven rivers (sapla sindhavas), adding to the five mentioned above the Indus and the Sarasvatí. The old Vedic name is more appropriate than Panjáb if we substitute the Jamna for the Sarasvatí or Sarustí, which is now a petty stream.

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Fig. 11. Panjáb Rivers.

River Valleys.—The cold weather traveller who is carried from Delhi to Ráwalpindí over the great railway bridges at points chosen because there the waters of the rivers are confined by nature, or can be confined by art, within moderate limits, has little idea of what one of these rivers is like in flood time. He sees that, even at such favoured spots, between the low banks there is a stretch of sand far exceeding in width the main channel, where a considerable volume of water is running, and the minor depressions, in which a sluggish and shallow flow may still be found. If, leaving the railway, he crosses a river by some bridge of boats or local ferry, he will find still wider expanses of sand sometimes bare and dry and white, at others moist and dark and covered with dwarf tamarisk. He may notice that, before he reaches the sand and the tamarisk scrub, he leaves by a gentle or abrupt descent the dry uplands, and passes into a lower, greener, and perhaps to his inexperienced eye more fertile seeming tract. This is the valley, often miles broad, through which the stream has moved in ever-shifting channels in the course of centuries. He finds it hard to realize that, when the summer heats melt the Himalayan snows, and the monsoon currents, striking against the northern mountain walls, are precipitated in torrents of rain, the rush of water to the plains swells the river 20, 30, 40, or even 50 fold. The sandy bed then becomes full from bank to bank, and the silt laden waters spill over into the cultivated lowlands beyond. Accustomed to the stable streams of his own land, he cannot conceive the risks the riverside farmer in the Panjáb runs of having fruitful fields smothered in a night with barren sand, or lands and well and house sucked into the river-bed. So great and sudden are the changes, bad and good, wrought by river action that the loss and gain have to be measured up year by year for revenue purposes. Nor is the visitor likely to imagine that the main channel may in a few seasons become a quite subsidiary or wholly deserted bed. Like all streams, e.g. the Po, which flow from the mountains into a flat terrain, the Panjáb rivers are perpetually silting up their beds, and thus, by their own action, becoming diverted into new channels or into existing minor ones, which are scoured out afresh. If our traveller, leaving the railway at Ráwalpindi, proceeds by tonga to the capital of Kashmír, he will find between Kohála and Báramúla another surprise awaiting him. The noble but sluggish river of the lowlands, which he crossed at the town of Jhelam, is here a swift and deep torrent, flowing over a boulder bed, and swirling round waterworn rocks in a gorge hemmed in by mountains. That is the typical state of the Himalayan rivers, though the same Jhelam above Báramúla is an exception, flowing there sluggishly through a very flat valley into a shallow lake.

The Indus Basin.—The river Sindh (Sanskrit, Sindhu), more familiar to us under its classical name of the Indus, must have filled with astonishment every invader from the west, and it is not wonderful that they called after it the country that lay beyond. Its basin covers an area of 373,000 square miles. Confining attention to Asia these figures, large though they seem, are far exceeded by those of the Yangtsze-Kiang. The area of which a description is attempted in this book is, with the exception of a strip along the Jamna and the part of Kashmír lying beyond the Muztagh-Karakoram range, all included in the Indus basin. But it does not embrace the whole of it. Part is in Tibet, part in Afghánistán and Biluchistán, and part in Sindh, through which province the Indus flows for 450 miles, or one-quarter of its whole course of 1800 miles. It seems likely that the Jamna valley was not always an exception, or at least that that river once flowed westwards through Rájputána to the Indian ocean. The five great rivers of the Panjáb all drain into the Indus, and the Ghagar with its tributary, the Sarustí, which now, even when in flood, loses itself in the sands of Bikaner, probably once flowed down the old Hakra bed in Baháwalpur either into the Indus or by an independent bed now represented by an old flood channel of the Indus in Sindh, the Hakro or Nara, which passes through the Rann of Kachh.

The Indus outside British India.—To the north of the Manasarowar lake in Tibet is Kailás, the Hindu Olympus. On the side of this mountain the Indus is said to rise at a height of 17,000 feet. After a course of 200 miles or more it crosses the south-east boundary of the Kashmír State at an elevation of 13,800 feet. From the Kashmír frontier to Mt Haramosh west of Gilgit it flows steadily to the north-west for 350 miles. After 125 miles Leh, the capital of Ladákh, is reached at a height of 10,500 feet, and here the river is crossed by the trade route to Yarkand. A little below Leh the Indus receives the Zánskar, which drains the south-east of Kashmír. After another 150 miles it flows through the basin, in which Skardo, the principal town in Baltistán, is situated. Above Skardo a large tributary, the Shyok, flows in from the east at an elevation of 8000 feet. The Shyok and its affluent, the Nubra, rise in the giant glaciers to the south-west of the Karakoram pass. After the Skardo basin is left behind the descent is rapid. The river rushes down a tremendous gorge, where it appears to break through the western Himálaya, skirts Haramosh, and at a point twenty-five miles east of Gilgit bends abruptly to the south. Shortly after it is joined from the west by the Gilgit river, and here the bed is about 4000 feet above sea level. Continuing to flow south for another twenty miles it resumes its westernly course to the north of Nanga Parvat and persists in it for 100 miles. Our political post of Chilás lies in this section on the south bank. Fifty or sixty miles west of Chilás the Indus turns finally to the south. From Jálkot, where the Kashmír frontier is left, to Palosí below the Mahaban mountain it flows for a hundred miles through territory over which we only exercise political control. Near Palosí, 812 miles from the source, the river enters British India. In Kashmír the Indus and the Shyok in some places flow placidly over alluvial flats, and at others with a rapid and broken current through narrow gorges. At Skardo their united stream is said, even in winter, to be 500 feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. If one of the deep gorges, as sometimes happens, is choked by a landslip, the flood that follows when the barrier finally bursts may spread devastation hundreds of miles away. To the north of the fertile Chach plain in Attock there is a wide stretch of land along the Indus, which still shows in its stony impoverished soil the effects of the great flood of 1841.

Fig. 12. The Indus at Attock.

Fig. 13. Indus at Káfirkot, D.I. Khán dt.

The Indus in British India.—After reaching British India the Indus soon becomes the boundary dividing Hazára and Pesháwar, two districts of the North West Frontier Province. Lower down it parts Pesháwar from the Panjáb district of Attock. In this section after a time the hills recede on both sides, and the stream is wide and so shallow that it is fordable in places in the cold weather. There are islands, ferry boats and rafts can ply, and the only danger is from sudden freshets. Ohind, where Alexander crossed, is in this section. A more famous passage is at Attock just below the junction of the Kábul river. Here the heights again approach the Indus on either bank. The volume of water is vastly increased by the union of the Kábul river, which brings down the whole drainage of the southern face of the Hindu Kush. From the north it receives near Jalálábád the Kunar river, and near Charsadda in Pesháwar the Swát, which with its affluent the Panjkora drains Dír, Bajaur, and Swát. In the cold weather looking northwards from the Attock fort one sees the Kábul or Landai as a blue river quietly mingling with the Indus, and in the angle between them a stretch of white sand. But during floods the junction is the scene of a wild turmoil of waters. At Attock there are a railway bridge, a bridge of boats, and a ferry. The bed of the stream is 2000 feet over sea level. For ninety miles below Attock the river is confined between bare and broken hills, till it finally emerges into the plains from the gorge above Kálabágh, where the Salt Range impinges on the left bank. Between Attock and Kálabágh the right bank is occupied by Pesháwar and Kohát and the left by Attock and Mianwálí. In this section the Indus is joined by the Haro and Soán torrents, and spanned at Khushálgarh by a railway bridge. This is the only other masonry bridge crossing it in the Panjáb. Elsewhere the passage has to be made by ferry boats or by boat bridges, which are taken down in the rainy season. At Kálabágh the height above sea level is less than 1000 feet. When it passes the western extremity of the Salt Range the river spreads out into a wide lake-like expanse of waters. It has now performed quite half of its long journey. Henceforth it receives no addition from the east till the Panjnad in the south-west corner of the Muzaffargarh district brings to it the whole tribute of the five rivers of the Panjáb. Here, though the Indian ocean is still 500 miles distant, the channel is less than 300 feet above the sea. From the west it receives an important tributary in the Kurram, which, with its affluent the Tochí, rises in Afghánistán. The torrents from the Sulimán Range are mostly used up for irrigation before they reach the Indus, but some of them mingle their waters with it in high floods. Below Kálabágh the Indus is a typical lowland river of great size, with many sandy islands in the bed and a wide valley subject to its inundations. Opposite Dera Ismail Khán the valley is seventeen miles across. As a plains river the Indus runs at first through the Mianwálí district of the Panjáb, then divides Mianwálí from Dera Ismail Khán, and lastly parts Muzaffargarh and the Baháwalpur State from the Panjáb frontier district of Dera Ghází Khán.

The Jhelam.—The Jhelam, the most westernly of the five rivers of the Panjáb, is called the Veth in Kashmir and locally in the Panjáb plains the Vehat. These names correspond to the Bihat of the Muhammadan historians and the Hydaspes of the Greeks, and all go back to the Sanskrit Vitasta. Issuing from a deep pool at Vernág to the east of Islámábád in Kashmír it becomes navigable just below that town, and flows north-west in a lazy stream for 102 miles through Srínagar, the summer capital, into the Wular lake, and beyond it to Báramúla. The banks are quite low and often cultivated to the river's edge. But across the flat valley there is on either side a splendid panorama of mountains. From Báramúla the character of the Jhelam suddenly changes, and for the next 70 miles to Kohála, where the traveller crosses by a fine bridge into the Panjáb, it rushes down a deep gorge, whose sides are formed by the Kajnág mountains on the right, and the Pír Panjál on the left, bank. Between Báramúla and Kohála there is a drop from 5000 to 2000 feet. At Domel, the stage before Kohála the Jhelam receives from the north the waters of the Kishnganga, and lower down it is joined by the Kunhár, which drains the Kágan glen in Hazára. A little above Kohála it turns sharply to the south, continuing its character as a mountain stream hemmed in by the hills of Ráwalpindí on the right bank and of the Púnch State on the left. The hills gradually sink lower and lower, but on the left side only disappear a little above the cantonment of Jhelam, where there is a noble railway bridge. From Jhelam onwards the river is of the usual plains' type. After dividing the districts of Jhelam (right bank) and Gujrát (left), it flows through the Sháhpur and Jhang districts, falling finally into the Chenáb at Trimmu, 450 miles from its source. There is a second railway bridge at Haranpur on the Sind Ságar line, and a bridge of boats at Khusháb, in the Sháhpur district. The noblest and most-varied scenery in the north-west Himalaya is in the catchment area of the Jhelam. The Kashmír valley and the valleys which drain into the Jhelam from the north, the Liddar, the Loláb, the Sind, and the Kágan glen, display a wealth of beauty unequalled elsewhere. Nor does this river wholly lose its association with beauty in the plains. Its very rich silt gives the lands on its banks the green charm of rich crops and pleasant trees.

The Chenáb.—The Chenáb (more properly Chínáb or river of China) is the Asikní of the Vedas and the Akesines of the Greek historians. It is formed by the union of the Chandra and Bhága, both of which rise in Lahul near the Báralácha pass. Having become the Chandrabhága the river flows through Pángí in Chamba and the south-east of Kashmír. Near Kishtwár it breaks through the Pír Panjál range, and thenceforwards receives the drainage of its southern slopes. At Akhnúr it becomes navigable and soon after it enters the Panjáb district of Siálkot. A little later it is joined from the west by the Tawí, the stream above which stands Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmír. The Chenáb parts Siálkot and Gujránwála on the left bank from Gujrát and Sháhpur on the right. At Wazírábád, near the point where Siálkot, Gujrát, and Gujránwála meet, it is crossed by the Alexandra railway bridge. Leaving Sháhpur and Gujránwála behind, the Chenáb flows through Jhang to its junction with the Jhelam at Trimmu. In this section there is a second railway bridge at Chund Bharwána. The united stream runs on under the name of Chenáb to be joined on the north border of the Multán district by the Ráví and on its southern border by the Sutlej. Below its junction with the latter the stream is known as the Panjnad. In the plains the Chenáb cannot be called an attractive river, and its silt is far inferior to that of the Jhelam.

Fig. 14. Fording the River at Lahore.

The Ráví.—The Ráví was known to the writers of the Vedic hymns as the Parushní, but is called in classical Sanskrit Irávatí, whence the Hydraotes of the Greek historians. It rises near the Rotang pass in Kángra, and flows north-west through the southern part of Chamba. Below the town of Chamba, it runs as a swift slaty-blue mountain stream, and here it is spanned by a fine bridge. Passing on to the north of the hill station of Dalhousie it reaches the Kashmir border, and turning to the south-west flows along it to Basolí where Kashmír, Chamba, and the British district of Gurdáspur meet. At this point it is 2000 feet above the sea level. It now forms the boundary of Kashmír and Gurdáspur, and finally near Madhopur, where the head-works of the Bárí Doáb canal are situated, it passes into the Gurdáspur district. Shortly after it is joined from the north by a large torrent called the Ujh, which rises in the Jammu hills. After reaching the Siálkot border the Ráví parts that district first from Gurdáspur and then from Amritsar, and, passing through the west of Lahore, divides Montgomery and Lyallpur, and flowing through the north of Multán joins the Chenáb near the Jhang border. In Multán there is a remarkable straight reach in the channel known as the Sídhnai, which has been utilized for the site of the head-works of a small canal. The Degh, a torrent which rises in the Jammu hills and has a long course through the Siálkot and Gujránwála districts, joins the Ráví when in flood in the north of the Lyallpur district. But its waters will now be diverted into the river higher up in order to safeguard the Upper Chenáb canal. Lahore is on the left bank of the Ráví. It is a mile from the cold weather channel, but in high floods the waters have often come almost up to the Fort. At Lahore the North Western Railway and the Grand Trunk Road are carried over the Ráví by masonry bridges. There is a second railway bridge over the Sídhnai reach in Multán. Though the Ráví, like the Jhelam, has a course of 450 miles, it has a far smaller catchment area, and is really a somewhat insignificant stream. In the cold weather, the canal takes such a heavy toll from it that below Mádhopur the supply of water is mainly drawn from the Ujh, and in Montgomery one may cross the bed dryshod for months together. The valley of the Ráví is far narrower than those of the rivers described in the preceding paragraphs, and the floods are most uncertain, but when they occur are of very great value.

Fig. 15. Biás at Manálí.

The Biás.—The Biás (Sanskrit, Vipasa; Greek, Hyphasis) rises near the Rotang pass at a height of about 13,000 feet. Its head-waters are divided from those of the Ráví by the Bara Bangáhal range. It flows for about sixty miles through the beautiful Kulu valley to Lárjí (3000 feet). It has at first a rapid course, but before it reaches Sultánpur (4000 feet), the chief village in Kulu, some thirty miles from the source, it has become, at least in the cold weather, a comparatively peaceful stream fringed with alder thickets. Heavy floods, however, sometimes cover fields and orchards with sand and boulders. There is a bridge at Manálí (6100 feet), a very lovely spot, another below Nagar, and a third at Lárjí. Near Lárjí the river turns to the west down a bold ravine and becomes for a time the boundary between Kulu and the Mandí State. Near the town of Mandí, where it is bridged, it bends again, and winds in a north-west and westerly direction through low hills in the south of Kángra till it meets the Siwáliks on the Hoshyárpur border. In this reach there is a bridge of boats at Dera Gopípur on the main road from Jalandhar and Hoshyárpur to Dharmsála. Elsewhere in the south of Kángra the traveller can cross without difficulty on a small bed supported on inflated skins. Sweeping round the northern end of the Siwáliks the Biás, having after long parting again approached within about fifteen miles of the Ráví, turns definitely to the south, forming henceforth the dividing line between Hoshyárpur and Kapúrthala (left bank) and Gurdáspur and Amritsar (right). Finally above the Harike ferry at a point where Lahore, Amritsar, Ferozepur, and Kapúrthala nearly meet, it falls into the Sutlej. The North Western Railway crosses it by a bridge near the Biás station and at the same place there is a bridge of boats for the traffic on the Grand Trunk Road. The chief affluents are the Chakkí, the torrent which travellers to Dharmsála cross by a fine bridge twelve miles from the railhead at Pathánkot, and the Black Bein in Hoshyárpur and Kapúrthala. The latter is a winding drainage channel, which starts in a swamp in the north of the Hoshyárpur district. The Biás has a total course of 390 miles. Only for about eighty miles or so is it a true river of the plains, and its floods do not spread far.

The Sutlej.—The Sutlej is the Shatadru of Vedic hymns and the Zaradros of Greek writers. The peasant of the Panjáb plains knows it as the Nílí or Ghara. After the Indus it is the greatest of Panjáb rivers, and for its source we have to go back to the Manasarowar lakes in Tibet. From thence it flows for 200 miles in a north-westerly direction to the British frontier near Shipkí. A little beyond the Spití river brings it the drainage of the large tract of that name in Kángra and of part of Western Tibet. From Shipkí it runs for forty miles in deep gorges through Kunáwar in the Bashahr State to Chíní, a beautiful spot near the Wangtu bridge, where the Hindustan-Tibet road crosses to the left bank. A little below Chíní the Báspa flows in from the southeast. The fall between the source and Chíní is from 15,000 to 7500 feet. There is magnificent cliff scenery at Rogí in this reach. Forty miles below Chíní the capital of Bashahr, Rámpur, on the south bank, is only 3300 feet above sea level. There is a second bridge at Rámpur, and from about this point the river becomes the boundary of Bashahr and Kulu, the route to which from Simla passes over the Lurí bridge (2650 feet) below Nárkanda. Beyond Lurí the Sutlej runs among low hills through several of the Simla Hill States. It pierces the Siwáliks at the Hoshyárpur border and then turns to the south, maintaining that trend till Rúpar and the head-works of the Sirhind canal are reached. For the next hundred miles to the Biás junction the general direction is west. Above the Harike ferry the Sutlej again turns, and flows steadily, though with many windings, to the south-west till it joins the Chenáb at the south corner of the Multán district. There are railway bridges at Phillaur, Ferozepur, and Adamwáhan. In the plains the Sutlej districts are—on the right bank Hoshyárpur, Jalandhar, Lahore, and Montgomery, and on the left Ambála, Ludhiána and Ferozepur. Below Ferozepur the river divides Montgomery and Multán from Baháwalpur (left bank). The Sutle; has a course of 900 miles, and a large catchment area in the hills. Notwithstanding the heavy toll taken by the Sirhind canal, its floods spread pretty far in Jalandhar and Ludhiána and below the Biás junction many monsoon canals have been dug which inundate a large area in the lowlands of the districts on either bank and of Baháwalpur. The dry bed of the Hakra, which can be traced through Baháwalpur, Bikaner, and Sindh, formerly carried the waters of the Sutlej to the sea.

The Ghagar and the Sarusti.—The Ghagar, once a tributary of the Hakra, rises within the Sirmúr State in the hills to the east of Kálka. A few miles south of Kálka it crosses a narrow neck of the Ambála district, and the bridge on the Ambála-Kalka railway is in this section. The rest of its course, till it loses itself in the sands of Bikaner, is chiefly in Patiála and the Karnál and Hissár districts. It is joined by the Umla torrent in Karnál and lower down the Sarustí unites with it in Patiála just beyond the Karnál border. It is hard to believe that the Sarustí of to-day is the famous Sarasvatí of the Vedas, though the little ditch-like channel that bears the name certainly passes beside the sacred sites of Thanesar and Pehowa. A small sandy torrent bearing the same name rises in the low hills in the north-east of the Ambála district, but it is doubtful if its waters, which finally disappear into the ground, ever reach the Thanesar channel. That seems rather to originate in the overflow of a rice swamp in the plains, and in the cold weather the bed is usually dry. In fact, till the Sarustí receives above Pehowa the floods of the Márkanda torrent, it is a most insignificant stream. The Márkanda, when in flood, carries a large volume of water, and below the junction the small channel of the Sarustí cannot carry the tribute received, which spreads out into a shallow lake called the Sainsa jhíl. This has been utilized for the supply of the little Sarustí canal, which is intended to do the work formerly effected in a rude way by throwing bands or embankments across the bed of the stream, and forcing the water over the surrounding lands. The same wasteful form of irrigation was used on a large scale on the Ghagar and is still practised on its upper reaches. Lower down earthen bands have been superceded by a masonry weir at Otu in the Hissár district. The northern and southern Ghagar canals, which irrigate lands in Hissár and Bikaner, take off from this weir.

Action of Torrents.—The Ghagar is large enough to exhibit all the three stages which a cho or torrent of intermittent flow passes through. Such a stream begins in the hills with a well-defined boulder-strewn bed, which is never dry. Reaching the plains the bed of a cho becomes a wide expanse of white sand, hardly below the level of the adjoining country, with a thread of water passing down it in the cold weather. But from time to time in the rainy season the channel is full from bank to bank and the waters spill far and wide over the fields. Sudden spates sometimes sweep away men and cattle before they can get across. If, as in Hoshyárpur, the chos flow into a rich plain from hills composed of friable sandstone and largely denuded of tree-growth, they are in their second stage most destructive. After long delay an Act was passed in 1900, which gives the government large powers for the protection of trees in the Siwáliks and the reclamation of torrent beds in the plains. The process of recovery cannot be rapid, but a measure of success has already been attained. It must not be supposed that the action of chos in this second stage is uniformly bad. Some carry silt as well as sand, and the very light loam which the great Márkanda cho has spread over the country on its banks is worth much more to the farmer than the stiff clay it has overlaid. Many chos do not pass into the third stage, when all the sand has been dropped, and the bed shrinks into a narrow ditch-like channel with steep clay banks. The inundations of torrents like the Degh and the Ghagar after this stage is reached convert the soil into a stiff impervious clay, where flood-water will lie for weeks without being absorbed into the soil. In Karnál the wretched and fever-stricken tract between the Ghagar and the Sarustí known as the Nailí is of this character.

The Jamna.—The Jamna is the Yamuna of Sanskrit writers. Ptolemy's and Pliny's versions, Diamouna and Jomanes, do not deviate much from the original. It rises in the Kumáon Himálaya, and, where it first meets the frontier of the Simla Hill States, receives from the north a large tributary called the Tons. Henceforth, speaking broadly, the Jamna is the boundary of the Panjáb and the United Provinces. On the Panjáb bank are from north to south the Sirmúr State, Ambála, Karnál, Rohtak, Delhi, and Gurgáon. The river leaves the Panjáb where Gurgáon and the district of Mathra, which belongs to the United Provinces, meet, and finally falls into the Ganges at Allahábád. North of Mathra Delhi is the only important town on its banks. The Jamna is crossed by railway bridges between Delhi and Meerut and between Ambála and Saháranpur.

Changes in Rivers.—Allusion has already been made to the changes which the courses of Panjáb rivers are subject to in the plains. The Indus below Kálabágh once ran through the heart of what is now the Thal desert. We know that in 1245 A.D. Multán was in the Sind Ságar Doáb between the Indus and the united streams of the Jhelam, Chenáb, and Ráví. The Biás had then no connection with the Sutlej, but ran in a bed of its own easily to be traced to-day in the Montgomery and Multán districts, and joined the Indus between Multán and Uch. The Sutlej was still flowing in the Hakra bed. Indeed its junction with the Biás near Harike, which probably led to a complete change in the course of the Biás, seems only to have taken place within the last 150 years[2].

CHAPTER IV

GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES

Extent of Geological Record.—Although the main part of the Panjáb plain is covered by a mantle of comparatively recent alluvium, the provinces described in this book display a more complete record of Indian geological history than any other similar area in the country. The variety is so great that no systematic or sufficient description could be attempted in a short chapter, and it is not possible, therefore, to do more in these few pages than give brief sketches of the patches of unusual interest.

Aravallí System.—In the southern and south-eastern districts of the Panjáb there are exposures of highly folded and metamorphosed rocks which belong to the most ancient formations in India. These occupy the northern end of the Aravallí hills, which form but a relic of what must have been at one time a great mountain range, stretching roughly south-south-west through Rájputána into the Bombay Presidency. The northern ribs of the Aravallí series disappear beneath alluvial cover in the Delhi district, but the rocks still underlie the plains to the west and north-west, their presence being revealed by the small promontories that peep through the alluvium near the Chenáb river, standing up as small hills near Chiniot in the Sháhpur, Jhang, and Lyallpur districts.

The Salt Range in the Jhelam and Sháhpur districts, with a western continuation in the Mianwálí district to and beyond the Indus, is the most interesting part of the Panjáb to the geologist. It contains notable records of three distinct eras in geological history. In association with the well-known beds of rock-salt, which are being extensively mined at Kheora, occur the most ancient fossiliferous formations known in India, corresponding in age with the middle and lower part of the Cambrian system of Europe. These very ancient strata immediately overlie the red marls and associated rock-salt beds, and it is possible that they have been thrust over bodily to occupy this position, as we have no parallel elsewhere for the occurrence of great masses of salt in formation older than the Cambrian.

The second fragment of geological history preserved in the Salt Range is very much younger, beginning with rocks which were formed in the later part of the Carboniferous period. The most remarkable feature in this fragment is a boulder-bed, resting unconformably on the Cambrian strata and including boulders of various shapes and sizes, which are often faceted and striated in a way indicative of glacial action. Several of the boulders belong to rocks of a peculiar and unmistakable character, such as are found in situ on the western flanks of the Aravallí Range, some 750 miles to the south. The glacial conditions which gave rise to these boulder-beds were presumably contemporaneous with those that produced the somewhat similar formation lying at the base of the great coal-bearing system in the Indian peninsula. The glacial boulder-bed thus offers indirect evidence as to the age of the Indian coal-measures, for immediately above this bed in the Salt Range there occur sandstones containing fossils which have affinities with the Upper Carboniferous formations of Australia, and on these sandstones again there lie alternations of shales and limestones containing an abundance of fossils that are characteristic of the Permo-Carboniferous rocks of Russia. These are succeeded by an apparently conformable succession of beds of still younger age, culminating in a series of shales, sandstones, and limestones of unmistakably Triassic age.

There is then an interruption in the record, and the next younger series preserved occurs in the western part of the Salt Range as well as in the hills beyond the Indus. This formation is of Upper Jurassic age, corresponding to the well-known beds of marine origin preserved in Cutch. Then follows again a gap in the record, and the next most interesting series of formations found in the Salt Range become of great importance from the economic as well as from the purely scientific point of view; these are the formations of Tertiary age.

The oldest of the Tertiary strata include a prominent limestone containing Nummulitic fossils, which are characteristic of these Lower Tertiary beds throughout the world. Here, as in many parts of North-Western India, the Nummulitic limestones are associated with coal which has been largely worked. The country between the Salt Range plateau and the hilly region away to the north is covered by a great stretch of comparatively young Tertiary formations, which were laid down in fresh water after the sea had been driven back finally from this region. The incoming of fresh-water conditions was inaugurated by the formation of beds which are regarded as equivalent in age to those known as the Upper Nari in Sind and Eastern Baluchistán, but the still later deposits, belonging to the well-known Siwálik series, are famous on account of the great variety and large size of many of the vertebrate fossil remains which they have yielded. In these beds to the north of the Salt Range there have been found remains of Dinotherium, forms related to the ancestors of the giraffe and various other mammals, some of them, like the Sivatherium, Mastodon, and Stegodon, being animals of great size. On the northern side of the Salt Range three fairly well-defined divisions of the Siwálik series have been recognised, each being conspicuously fossiliferous—a feature that is comparatively rare in the Siwálik hills further to the south-east, where these rocks were first studied. The Siwálik series of the Salt Range are thus so well developed that this area might be conveniently regarded as the type succession for the purpose of correlating isolated fragmentary occurrences of the same general series in northern and western India. To give an idea as to the age of these rocks, it will be sufficient to mention that the middle division of the series corresponds roughly to the well-known deposits of Pikermi and Samos.

Kashmir deserves special mention, as it is a veritable paradise for the geologist. Of the variety of problems that it presents one might mention the petrological questions connected with the intrusion of the great masses of granite, and their relation to the slates and associated metamorphic rocks. Of fossiliferous systems there is a fine display of material ranging in age from Silurian to Upper Trias, and additional interest is added by the long-continued volcanic eruptions of the "Panjál trap." Students of recent phenomena have at their disposal interesting problems in physiography, including a grand display of glaciers, and the extensive deposits of so-called karewas, which appear to have been formed in drowned valleys, where the normal fluviatile conditions are modified by those characteristic of lakes. The occurrence of sapphires in Zánskar gives the State also an interest to the mineralogist and connoisseur of gem-stones.

Of this kaleidoscopic assemblage of questions the ones of most immediate interest are connected with the Silurian-Trias succession in the Kashmír valley, for here we have a connecting-link between the marine formations of the Salt Range area and those which are preserved in greater perfection in Spití and other parts of the Tibetan highlands, stretching away to the south-east at the back of the great range of crystalline snow-covered peaks.

In this interesting part of Kashmír the most important feature to Indian geologists is the occurrence of plant remains belonging to genera identical with those that occur in the lower part of the great coal-bearing formation of Peninsular India, known as the Gondwána system. Until these discoveries were made in Kashmír about ten years ago the age of the base of the Gondwánas was estimated only on indirect evidence, partly due to the assumption that glacial conditions in the Salt Range and those at the base of the Gondwánas were contemporaneous, and partly due to analogy with the coal measures of Australia and South Africa. In Kashmír the characteristic plant remains of the Lower Gondwánas are found associated with marine fossils in great abundance, and these permit of a correlation of the strata with the upper part of the Carboniferous system of the European standard stratigraphical scale.

Kashmír seems to have been near the estuary of one of the great rivers that formerly flowed over the ancient continent of Gondwánaland (when India and South Africa formed parts of one continental mass) into the great Eurasian Ocean known as Tethys. As the deposits formed in this great ocean give us the principal part of our data for forming a standard stratigraphical scale, the plants which were carried out to sea become witnesses of the kind of flora that flourished during the main Indian coal period; they thus enable us with great precision to fix the position of the fresh-water Gondwánas in comparison with the marine succession.

Spití.—With á brief reference to one more interesting patch among the geological records of this remarkable region, space will force us to pass on to consideration of minerals of economic value. The line of snow-covered peaks, composed mainly of crystalline rocks and forming a core to the Himálaya in a way analogous to the granitic core of the Alps, occupies what was once apparently the northern shore of Gondwánaland, and to the north of it there stretched the great ocean of Tethys, covering the central parts of Asia and Europe, one of its shrunken relics being the present Mediterranean Sea. The bed of this ocean throughout many geological ages underwent gradual depression and received the sediments brought down by the rivers from the continent which stretched away to the south. The sedimentary deposits thus formed near the shore-line or further out in deep water attained a thickness of well over 20,000 feet, and have been studied in the tahsíl of Spití, on the northern border of Kumáon, and again on the eastern Tibetan plateau to the north of Darjeeling. A reference to the formations preserved in Spití may be regarded as typical of the geological history and the conditions under which these formations were produced.

Succession of Fossiliferous Beds.—In age the fossiliferous beds range from Cambrian right through to the Tertiary epoch; between these extremes no single period was passed without leaving its records in some part of the great east-to-west Tibetan basin. At the base of the whole succession there lies a series of schists which have been largely metamorphosed, and on these rest the oldest of the fossiliferous series, which, on account of their occurring in the region of snow, has been named the Haimanta system. The upper part of the Haimanta system has been found to contain the characteristic trilobites of the Cambrian period of Europe. Over this system lie beds which have yielded in succession Ordovician and Silurian fossils, forming altogether a compact division which has been distinguished locally as the Muth system. Then follows the so-called Kanáwar system, which introduces Devonian conditions, followed by fossils characteristic of the well-known mountain limestone of Europe.

Then occurs a break in the succession which varies in magnitude in different localities, but appears to correspond to great changes in the physical geography which widely affect the Indian region. This break corresponds roughly to the upper part of the Carboniferous system of Europe, and has been suggested as a datum line for distinguishing in India an older group of fossiliferous systems below (formed in an area that has been distinguished by the name Dravidian), from the younger group above, which has been distinguished by the name Aryan.

During the periods that followed this interruption the bed of the great Eurasian Ocean seems to have subsided persistently though intermittently. As the various sediments accumulated the exact position of the shore-line must have changed to some extent to give rise to the conditions favourable for the formation at one time of limestone, at another of shale and at other times of sandy deposits. The whole column of beds, however, seems to have gone on accumulating without any folding movements, and they are consequently now found lying apparently in perfect conformity stage upon stage, from those that are Permian in age at the base, right through the Mesozoic group, till the time when Tertiary conditions were inaugurated and the earth movements began which ultimately drove back the ocean and raised the bed, with its accumulated load of sediments, into the great folds that now form the Himálayan Range. This great mass of Aryan strata includes an enormous number of fossil remains, giving probably a more complete record of the gradual changes that came over the marine fauna of Tethys than any other area of the kind known. One must pass over the great number of interesting features still left unmentioned, including the grand architecture of the Sub-Himálaya and the diversity of formations in different parts of the Frontier Province; for the rest of the available space must be devoted to a brief reference to the minerals of value.

Rock-salt, which occurs in abundance, is possibly the most important mineral in this area. The deposits most largely worked are those which occur in the well-known Salt Range, covering parts of the districts of Jhelam, Sháhpur, and Mianwálí. Near the village of Kheora the main seam, which is being worked in the Mayo mines, has an aggregate thickness of 550 feet, of which five seams, with a total thickness of 275 feet, consist of salt pure enough to be placed on the table with no more preparation than mere pulverising. The associated beds are impregnated with earth, and in places there occur thin layers of potash and magnesian salts. In this area salt quarrying was practised for an unknown period before the time of Akbar, and was continued in a primitive fashion until it came under the control of the British Government with the occupation of the Panjáb in 1849. In 1872 systematic mining operations were planned, and the general line of work has been continued ever since, with an annual output of roughly 100,000 tons.

Open quarries for salt are developed a short distance to the east-north-east of Kálabágh on the Indus, and similar open work is practised near Kohát in the North West Frontier Province, where the quantity of salt may be regarded as practically inexhaustible. At Bahádur Khel the salt lies at the base of the Tertiary series, and can be traced for a distance of about eight miles with an exposed thickness of over 1000 feet, sometimes standing up as hills of solid salt above the general level of the plains. In this area the production is naturally limited by want of transport and the small local demand, the total output from the quarries being about 16,000 tons per annum. A small quantity of salt (generally about 4000 tons a year), is raised also from open quarries in the Mandí State, where the rock-salt beds, distinctly impure and earthy, lie near the junction between Tertiary formations and the older unfossiliferous groups.

Coal occurs at numerous places in association with the Nummulitic limestones of Lower Tertiary age, in the Panjáb, in the North West Frontier Province, and in the Jammu division of Kashmír. The largest output has been obtained from the Salt Range, where mines have been opened up on behalf of the North Western Railway. The mines at Dandot in the Jhelam district have considerable fluctuations in output, which, however, for many years ranged near 50,000 tons. These mines, having been worked at a financial loss, were finally abandoned by the Railway Company in 1911, but a certain amount of work is still being continued by local contractors. At Bháganwála, 19 miles further east, in the adjoining district of Sháhpur, coal was also worked for many years for the North Western State Railway, but the maximum output in any one year never exceeded 14,000 tons, and in 1900, owing to the poor quality of material obtained, the collieries were closed down. Recently, small outcrop workings have been developed in the same formation further west on the southern scarp of the Salt Range at Tejuwála in the Sháhpur district.

Gold to a small amount is washed from the gravel of the Indus and some other rivers by native workers, and large concessions have been granted for systematic dredging, but these enterprises have not yet reached the commercially paying stage.

Other Metals.—Prospecting has been carried on at irregular intervals in Kulu and along the corresponding belt of schistose rocks further west in Kashmír and Chitrál. The copper ores occur as sulphides along certain bands in the chloritic and micaceous schists, similar in composition and probably in age to those worked further east in Kumáon, in Nipál, and in Sikkim. In Lahul near the Shigrí glacier there is a lode containing antimony sulphide with ores of zinc and lead, which would almost certainly be opened up and developed but for the difficulty of access and cost of transport to the only valuable markets.

Petroleum springs occur among the Tertiary formations of the Panjáb and Biluchistán, and a few thousand gallons of oil are raised annually. Prospecting operations have been carried on vigorously during the past two or three years, but no large supplies have so far been proved. The principal oil-supplies of Burma and Assam have been obtained from rocks of Miocene age, like those of Persia and the Caspian region, but the most promising "shows" in North West India have been in the older Nummulitic formations, and the oil is thus regarded by some experts as the residue of the material which has migrated from the Miocene beds that probably at one time covered the Nummulitic formations, but have since been removed by the erosive action of the atmosphere.

Alum is manufactured from the pyritous shales of the Mianwálí district, the annual output being generally about 200 to 300 tons. Similar shales containing pyrites are known to occur in other parts of this area, and possibly the industry might be considerably extended, as the annual requirements of India, judged by the import returns, exceed ten times the native production of alum.

Borax is produced in Ladákh and larger quantities are imported across the frontier from Tibet. In the early summer one frequently meets herds of sheep being driven southwards across the Himalayan passes, each sheep carrying a couple of small saddle-bags laden with borax or salt, which is bartered in the Panjáb bazars for Indian and foreign stores for the winter requirements of the snow-blocked valleys beyond the frontier.

Sapphires.—The sapphires of Zánskar have been worked at intervals since the discovery of the deposit in 1881, and some of the finest stones in the gem market have been obtained from this locality, where work is, however, difficult on account of the great altitude and the difficulty of access from the plains.

Limestone.—Large deposits of Nummulitic limestone are found in the older Tertiary formations of North-West India. It yields a pure lime and is used in large quantities for building purposes. The constant association of these limestones with shale beds, and their frequent association with coal, naturally suggest their employment for the manufacture of cement; and special concessions have recently been given by the Panjáb Government with a view of encouraging the development of the industry. The nodular impure limestone, known generally by the name of kankar, contains sufficient clay to give it hydraulic characters when burnt, and much cement is thus manufactured. The varying composition of kankar naturally results in a product of irregular character, and consequently cement so made can replace Portland cement only for certain purposes.

Slate is quarried in various places for purely local use. In the Kángra valley material of very high quality is obtained and consequently secures a wide distribution, limited, however, by competition with cheaply made tiles.

Gypsum occurs in large quantities in association with the rock-salt of the Salt Range, but the local demand is small. There are also beds of potash and magnesian salts in the same area, but their value and quantity have not been thoroughly proved.

January to February.

March to May

June to September

October to December.

Fig. 16. Rainfall of different Seasons.

CHAPTER V

CLIMATE

Types of Climate.—The climate of the Panjáb plains is determined by their distance from the sea and the existence of formidable mountain barriers to the north and west. The factor of elevation makes the climate of the Himalayan tracts very different from that of the plains. Still more striking is the contrast between the Indian Himalayan climate and the Central Asian Trans-Himalayan climate of Spití, Lahul, and Ladákh.

Zones.—A broad division into six zones may be recognised:

Trans-Himalayan Climate.—Spití, Lahul, and Ladákh are outside the meteorological influences which affect the rest of the Indian Empire. The lofty ranges of the Himálaya interpose an almost insurmountable barrier between them and the clouds of the monsoon. The rainfall is extraordinarily small, and, considering the elevation of the inhabited parts, 10,000 to 14,000 feet, the snowfall there is not heavy. The air is intensely dry and clear, and the daily and seasonal range of temperature is extreme. Leh, the capital of Ladákh (11,500 feet), has an average rainfall (including snow) of about 3 inches. The mean temperature is 43° Fahr., varying from 19° in January to 64° in July. But these figures give no idea of the rigours of the severe but healthy climate. The daily range is from 25 to 30 degrees, or double what we are accustomed to in England. Once 17° below zero was recorded. In the rare dry clear atmosphere the power of the solar rays is extraordinary. "Rocks exposed to the sun may be too hot to lay the hand upon at the same time that it is freezing in the shade."

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Fig. 17. Average Barometric and Wind Chart for January.

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Fig. 18. Average Barometric and Wind Chart for July.

The Indian Zones—Meteorological factors.—The distribution of pressure in India, determined mainly by changes of temperature, and itself determining the direction of the winds and the character of the weather, is shown graphically in figures 17 and 18. The winter or north-east monsoon does not penetrate into the Panjáb, where light westernly and northernly winds prevail during the cold season. What rain is received is due to land storms originating beyond the western frontier. The branch of the summer or south-west monsoon which chiefly affects the Panjáb is that which blows up the Bay of Bengal. The rain-clouds striking the Eastern Himálaya are deflected to the west and forced up the Gangetic plain by south-westernly winds. The lower ranges of the Panjáb Himálaya receive in this way very heavy downpours. The rain extends into the plains, but exhausts itself and dies away pretty rapidly to the south and west. The Bombay branch of the monsoon mostly spends itself on the Gháts and in the Deccan. But a part of it penetrates from time to time to the south-east Panjáb, and, if it is sucked into the Bay current, the result is widespread rain.

Himalayan Zone.—The impressions which English people get of the climate of the Himálaya, or in Indian phrase "the Hills," are derived mainly from stations like Simla and Murree perched at a height of from 6500 to 7500 feet on the outer ranges. The data of meteorologists are mainly taken from the same localities. Places between 8000 and 10,000 feet in height and further from the plains enjoy a finer climate, being both cooler and drier in summer. But they are less accessible, and weakly persons would find the greater rarity of the air trying.

In the first fortnight of April the plains become disagreeably warm, and it is well to take European children to the Hills. The Panjáb Government moves to Simla in the first fortnight of May. By that time Simla is pretty warm in the middle of the day, but the nights are pleasant. The mean temperature of the 24 hours in May and June is 65° or 66°, the mean maximum and minimum being 78° and 59°. Thunderstorms with or without hail are not uncommon in April, May, and June. In a normal year the monsoon clouds drift up in the end of June, and the next three months are "the Rains." Usually it does not rain either all day or every day; but sometimes for weeks together Simla is smothered in a blanket of grey mist. Normally the rain comes in bursts with longer or shorter breaks between. About the third week of September the rains often cease quite suddenly, the end being usually proclaimed by a thunderstorm. Next morning one wakes to a new heaven and a new earth, a perfectly cloudless sky, and clean, crisp, cool air. This ideal weather lasts for the next three months. Even in December the days are made pleasant by bright sunshine, and the range of temperature is much less than in the plains. In the end of December or beginning of January the night thermometer often falls lower at Ambála and Ráwalpindí than at Simla and Murree. After Christmas the weather becomes broken, and in January and February falls of snow occur. It is a disagreeable time, and English residents are glad to descend to the plains. In March also the weather is often unsettled. The really heavy falls of snow occur at levels much higher than Simla. These remarks apply mutatis mutandis to Dharmsála, Dalhousie, and Murree. Owing to its position right under a lofty mountain wall Dharmsála is a far wetter place than Simla. Murree gets its monsoon later, and the summer rainfall is a good deal lighter. In winter it has more snow, being nearer the source of origin of the storms. Himalayan valleys at an elevation of 5000 feet, such as the Vale of Kashmír, have a pleasant climate. The mean temperature of Srínagar (5255 feet) varies from 33° in January to 75° in July, when it is unpleasantly hot, and Europeans often move to Gulmarg. Kashmír has a heavy snowfall even in the Jhelam valley. Below 4000 feet, especially in confined river valleys the Himalayan climate is often disagreeably hot and stuffy.

Climate of the Plains.—The course of the seasons is the same in the plains. The jaded resident finds relief when the rains cease in the end of September. The days are still warm, but the skies are clear, the air dry, and the nights cool. November is rainless and in every way a pleasant month. The clouds begin to gather before Christmas, but rain often holds off till January. Pleasant though the early months of the cold weather are, they lay traps for the unwary. In October and November the daily range of temperature is very large, exceeding 30°, and the fall at sunset very sudden. Care is needed to avoid a chill and the fever that follows. Clear and dry though the air is, the blue of the skies is pale owing to a light dust haze in the upper atmosphere. For the same reason the Himalayan snows except after rain are veiled from dwellers in the plains at a distance of 30 miles from the foot-hills. The air in these months before the winter rains is wonderfully still. In the three months after Christmas the Panjáb is the pathway of a series of small storms from the west, preceded by close weather and occurring usually at intervals of a few weeks. After a day or two of wet weather the sky clears, and the storm is followed by a great drop in the temperature. The traveller who shivers after a January rain-storm finds it hard to believe that the Panjáb plain is a part of the hottest region of the Old World which stretches from the Sahára to Delhi. If he had to spend the period from May to July there he would have small doubts on the subject. The heat begins to be unpleasant in April, when hot westernly winds prevail. An occasional thunderstorm with hail relieves the strain for a little. The warmest period of the year is May and June. But the intense dry heat is healthier and to many less trying than the mugginess of the rainy season. The dust-storms which used to be common have become rarer and lighter with the spread of canal irrigation in the western Panjáb. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But in the latter half of it cooler nights give promise of a better time.

Special features of Plain Zones.—The submontane zone has the most equable and the pleasantest climate in the plains. It has a rainfall of from 30 to 40 inches, five-sevenths or more of which belongs to the monsoon period (June-September). The north-western area has a longer and colder winter and spring. In the end of December and in January the keen dry cold is distinctly trying. The figures in Statement I, for Ráwalpindí and Pesháwar, are not very characteristic of the zone as a whole. The average of the rainfall figures, 13 inches for Pesháwar and 32 for Ráwalpindí, would give a truer result. The monsoon rains come later and are much less abundant than in the submontane zone. Their influence is very feeble in the western and south-western part of the area. On the other hand the winter rains, are heavier than in any other part of the province. Delhi and Lahore represent the extreme conditions of the central and south-eastern plains. The latter is really on the edge of the dry south-western area. The eastern districts of the zone have a shorter and less severe cold weather than the western, an earlier and heavier monsoon, but scantier winter rains. The total rainfall varies from 16 to 30 inches. The south-western zone, with a rainfall of from 5 to 15 inches, is the driest part of India proper except northern Sindh and western Rájputána. Neither monsoon current affects it much. At Multán there are only about fifteen days in the whole year on which any rain falls.

CHAPTER VI

HERBS, SHRUBS, AND TREES

Affinities of Panjáb Flora.—It is hopeless to describe except in the broadest outline the flora of a tract covering an area of 250,000 square miles and ranging in altitude from a few hundred feet to a height 10,000 feet above the limit of flowering plants. The nature of the vegetation of any tract depends on rainfall and temperature, and only secondarily on soil. A desert is a tract with a dry substratum and dry air, great heat during some part of the year, and bright sunshine. The soil may be loam or sand, and as regards vegetation a sandy desert is the worst owing to the rapid drying up of the subsoil after rain. In the third of the maps appended to Schimper's Plant Geography by far the greater part of the area dealt with in this book is shown as part of the vast desert extending from the Sahára to Manchuria. Seeing that the monsoon penetrates into the province and that it is traversed by large snow-fed rivers the Panjáb, except in parts of the extreme western and south-western districts, is not a desert like the Sahára or Gobí, and Schimper recognised this by marking most of the area as semi-desert. Still the flora outside the Hills and the submontane tract is predominantly of the desert type, being xerophilous or drought-resisting. The adaptations which enable plants to survive in a tract deficient in moisture are of various kinds. The roots may be greatly developed to enable them to tap the subsoil moisture, the leaves may be reduced in size, converted into thorns, or entirely dispensed with, in order to check rapid evaporation, they may be covered with silky or felted hairs, a modification which produces the same result, or their internal tissue may be succulent or mucilaginous. In the plants of the Panjáb plains there is no difficulty in recognising these features of a drought-resisting flora. Schimper's map shows in the north-east of the area a wedge thrust in between the plains' desert and the dry elevated alpine desert cut off from the influence of the monsoon by the lofty barrier of the Inner Himálaya. This consists of two parts, monsoon forest, corresponding roughly with the Himalayan area Cis Ráví above the 5000 feet contour, and dry woodland of a semi-tropical stamp, consisting, of the adjoining foot-hills and submontane tract. This wedge is in fact treated as part of the zone, which in the map (after Drude) prefixed to Willis' Manual and Dictionary of the Flowering Plants and Ferns, is called Indo-Malayan, and which embraces the Malayan Archipelago and part of North Australia, Burma, and practically the whole of India except the Panjáb, Sindh, and Rájputána. In Drude's map the three countries last mentioned are included in a large zone called "the Mediterranean and Orient." This is a very broad classification, and in tracing the relationships of the Panjáb flora it is better to treat the desert area of North Africa, which in Tripoli and Egypt extends to the coast, apart from the Mediterranean zone. It is a familiar fact that, as we ascend lofty mountains like those of the Himálaya, we pass through belts or regions of vegetation of different types. The air steadily becomes rarer and therefore colder, especially at night, and at the higher levels there is a marked reduction in the rainfall. When the alpine region, which in the Himálaya may be taken as beginning at 11,000 feet, is reached, the plants have as a rule bigger roots, shorter stems, smaller leaves, but often larger and more brilliantly coloured flowers. These are adaptations of a drought-resisting kind.

Regions.—In this sketch it will suffice to divide the tract into six regions:

Of course a flora does not fit itself into compartments, and the changes of type are gradual.

Panjáb Dry Plain.—The affinities of the flora of the Panjáb plains south of the Salt Range and the submontane tract are, especially in the west, with the desert areas of Persia, Arabia, and North Africa, though the spread of canal irrigation is modifying somewhat the character of the vegetation. The soil and climate are unsuited to the growth of large trees, but adapted to scrub jungle of a drought-resisting type, which at one time covered very large areas from the Jamna to the Jhelam. The soil on which this sparse scrub grew is a good strong loam, but the rainfall was too scanty and the water-level too deep to admit of much cultivation outside the valleys of the rivers till the labours of canal engineers carried their waters to the uplands. East of the Sutlej the Bikaner desert thrusts northwards a great wedge of sandy land which occupies a large area in Baháwalpur, Hissár, Ferozepur, and Patiála. Soil of this description is free of forest growth, and the monsoon rainfall in this part of the province is sufficient to encourage an easy, but very precarious, cultivation of autumn millets and pulses. The great Thal desert to the south of the Salt Range between the valleys of the Jhelam and the Indus has a similar soil, but the scantiness of the rainfall has confined cultivation within much narrower limits. Between the Sutlej and the Jhelam the uplands between the river valleys are known locally as Bárs. The largest of the truly indigenous trees of the Panjáb plains are the farásh (Tamarix articulata) and the thorny kíkar (Acacia Arabica). The latter yields excellent wood for agricultural implements, and fortunately it grows well in sour soils. Smaller thorny acacias are the nímbar or raunj (Acacia leucophloea) and the khair (Acacia Senegal). The dwarf tamarisk, pilchí or jhao (Tamarix dioica), grows freely in moist sandy soils near rivers. The scrub jungle consists mostly of jand (Prosopis spicigera), a near relation of the Acacias, jál or van (Salvadora oleoides), and the coral-flowered karíl or leafless caper (Capparis aphylla). All these show their desert affinities, the jand by its long root and its thorns, the jál by its small leathery leaves, and the karíl by the fact that it has managed to dispense with leaves altogether. The jand is a useful little tree, and wherever it grows the natural qualities of the soil are good. The sweetish fruit of the jál, known as pílu, is liked by the people, and in famines they will even eat the berries of the leafless caper. Other characteristic plants of the Panjáb plains are under Leguminosae, the khip (Crotalaria burhia), two Farsetias (faríd kí búti), and the jawása or camel thorn (Alhagi camelorum), practically leafless, but with very long and stout spines; under Capparidaceae several Cleomes, species of Corchorus (Tiliaceae), under Zygophyllaceae three Mediterranean genera, Tribulus, Zygophyllum, and Fagonia, under Solanaceae several Solanums and Withanias, and various salsolaceous Chenopods known as lána.

Fig. 19. Banian or Bor trees.

In the sandier tracts the ak (Calotropis procera, N.O. Asclepiadaceae), the harmal (Peganum harmala, N.O. Rutaceae), and the colocynth gourd (Citrullus colocynthis, N.O. Cucurbitaceae), which, owing to the size of its roots, manages to flourish in the sands of African and Indian deserts, grow abundantly. Common weeds of cultivation are Fumaria parviflora, a near relation of the English fumitory, Silene conoidea, and two Spergulas (Caryophyllaceae), and Sisymbrium Irio (Cruciferae). A curious little Orchid, Zeuxine sulcata, is found growing among the grass on canal banks. The American yellow poppy, Argemone Mexicana, a noxious weed, has unfortunately established itself widely in the Panjáb plain. Two trees of the order Leguminosae, the shisham or tálí (Dalbergia Sissoo) and the siris (Albizzia lebbek), are commonly planted on Panjáb roads. The true home of the former is in river beds in the low hills or in ravines below the hills. But it is a favourite tree on roads and near wells throughout the province, and deservedly so, for it yields excellent timber. The siris on the other hand is an untidy useless tree. The kíkar might be planted as a roadside tree to a greater extent. Several species of figs, especially the pípal (Ficus religiosa) and bor or banian (Ficus Indica) are popular trees.

Salt Range and North-West Plains.—-Our second region may be taken as extending from the Pabbí hills on the east of the Jhelam in Gujrát to our administrative boundary beyond the Indus, its southern limit being the Salt Range. Here the flora is of a distinctly Mediterranean type. Poppies are as familiar in Ráwalpindi as they are in England or Italy, and Hypecoum procumbens, a curious Italian plant of the same order, is found in Attock. The abundance of Crucifers is also a Mediterranean feature. Eruca sativa, the oil-seed known as táramíra or jamián, which sows itself freely in waste land and may be found growing even on railway tracks in the Ráwalpindí division, is an Italian and Spanish weed. Malcolmia strigosa, which spreads a reddish carpet over the ground, and Malcolmia Africana are common Crucifers near Ráwalpindí. The latter is a Mediterranean species. The Salt Range genera Diplotaxis and Moricandia are Italian, and the peculiar Notoceras Canariensis found in Attock is also a native of the Canary Islands. Another order, Boraginaceae, which is very prominent in the Mediterranean region, is also important in the North-West Panjáb, though the showier plants of the order are wanting. One curious Borage, Arnebia Griffithii, seems to be purely Asiatic. It has five brown spots on its petals, which fade and disappear in the noonday sunshine. These are supposed to be drops of sweat which fell from Muhammad's forehead, hence the plant is called paighambarí phúl or the prophet's flower. Among Composites Calendulas and Carthamus oxyacantha or the pohlí, a near relation of the Carthamus which yields the saffron dye, are abundant. Both are common Mediterranean genera. Silybum Marianum, a handsome thistle with large leaves mottled with white, extends from Britain to Ráwalpindí. Interesting species are Tulipa stellata and Tulipa chrysantha. The latter is a Salt Range plant, as is the crocus-like Merendera Persica, and the yellow Iris Aitchisoni. A curious plant found in the same hills is the cactus-like Boucerosia (N.O. Asclepiadaceae), recalling to botanists the more familiar Stapelias of the same order. Another leafless Asclepiad, Periploca aphylla, which extends westwards to Arabia and Nubia and southwards to Sindh, is, like Boucerosia, a typical xerophyte adapted to a very dry soil and atmosphere. The thorny Acacias, A. eburnea and A. modesta (vern. phuláhí), of the low bare hills of the N.W. Panjáb are also drought-resisting plants.

Submontane Region.—The Submontane region consists of a broad belt below the Siwáliks extending from the Jamna nearly to the Jhelam, and may be said to include the districts of Ambála, Karnál (part), Hoshyárpur, Kángra (part), Hazára (part), Jalandhar, Gurdáspur, Siálkot, Gujrát (part). In its flora there is a strong infusion of Indo-Malayan elements. An interesting member of it is the Butea frondosa, a small tree of the order Leguminosae. It is known by several names, dhák, chichra, paláh, and palás. Putting out its large orange-red flowers in April it ushers in the hot weather. It has a wide range from Ceylon to Bengal, where it has given its name to the town of Dacca and the battlefield of Plassy (Palási). From Bengal it extends all the way to Hazára. There can be no doubt that a large part of the submontane region was once dhák forest. Tracts in the north of Karnál—Chachra, in Jalandhar—Dardhák, and in Gujrát—Paláhí, have taken their names from this tree. It coppices very freely, furnishes excellent firewood and good timber for the wooden frames on which the masonry cylinders of wells are reared, it exudes a valuable gum, its flowers yield a dye, and the dry leaves are eaten by buffaloes. A tree commonly planted near wells and villages in the submontane tract is the dhrek (Melia azedarach, N.O. Meliaceae), which is found as far west as Persia and is often called by English people the Persian lilac. The bahera (Terminalia belerica, N.O. Combretaceae), a much larger tree, is Indo-Malayan. Common shrubs are the marwan (Vitex negundo, N.O. Verbenaceae), Plumbago Zeylanica (Plumbaginaceae), the bánsa or bhekar (Adhatoda vasica, N.O. Acanthaceae). The last is Indo-Malayan. Among herbs Cassias, which do not occur in Europe, are common. The curious cactus-like Euphorbia Royleana grows abundantly and is used for making hedges.

Sub-Himálaya.—A large part of the Sub-Himalayan region belongs to the Siwáliks. The climate is fairly moist and subject to less extremes of heat and cold than the regions described above. A strong infusion of Indo-Malayan types is found and a noticeable feature is the large number of flowering trees and shrubs. Such beautiful flowering trees as the simal or silk-cotton tree (Bombax Malabaricum, N.O. Malvaceae), the amaltás (Cassia fistula), Albizzia mollis and Albizzia stipulata, Erythrina suberosa, Bauhinia purpurea and Bauhinia variegata, all belonging to the order Leguminosae, are unknown in Europe, but common in the Indo-Malayan region. This is true also of Oroxylum Indicum (N.O. Bignoniaceae) with its remarkable long sword-like capsules, and of the kamíla (Mallotus Philippinensis), which abounds in the low hills, but may escape the traveller's notice as its flowers have no charm of form or colour. He will in spring hardly fail to observe another Indo-Malayan tree, the dháwí (Woodfordia floribunda, N.O. Lythraceae) with its bright red flowers. Shrubs with conspicuous flowers are also common, among which may be noted species of Clematis, Capparis spinosa, Kydia calycina, Mimosa rubicaulis, Hamiltonia suaveolens, Caryopteris Wallichiana, and Nerium Oleander. The latter grows freely in sandy torrent beds. Rhus cotinus, which reddens the hillsides in May, is a native also of Syria, Italy, and Southern France. Other trees to be noticed are a wild pear (Pyrus pashia), the olive (Olea cuspidata), the khair (Acacia catechu) useful to tanners, the tun (Cedrela toona), whose wood is often used for furniture, the dháman (Grewia oppositifolia, N.O. Tiliaceae), and several species of fig. The most valuable products however of the forests of the lower hills are the chír or chíl pine (Pinus longifolia), and a giant grass, the bamboo (Dendrocalamus strictus), which attains a height of from 20 to 40 feet. Shrubs which grow freely on stony hills are the sanattha or mendru (Dodonaea viscosa, N.O. Sapindaceae), which is a valuable protection against denudation, as goats pass it by, the garna, which is a species of Carissa, and Plectranthus rugosus. Climbers are common. The great Hiptage madablota (N.O. Malpighiaceae), the Bauhinia Vahlii or elephant creeper, and some species of the parasitic Loranthus, deserve mention, also Acacia caesia, Pueraria tuberosa, Vallaris Heynei, Porana paniculata, and several vines, especially Vitis lanata with its large rusty leaves. Characteristic herbs are the sweet-scented Viola patrinii, the slender milkwort; Polygala Abyssinica, a handsome pea, Vigna vexillata, a borage, Trichodesma Indicum, a balsam, Impatiens balsamina, familiar in English gardens, the beautiful delicate little blue Evolvulus alsinoides, the showy purple convolvulus, Ipomaea hederacea, and a curious lily, Gloriosa superba.

Fig. 20. Deodárs and Hill Temple.

Temperate Himálaya.—The richest part of the temperate Himalayan flora is probably in the 7500-10,000 zone. Above 10,000 feet sup-alpine conditions begin, and at 12,000 feet tree growth becomes very scanty and the flora is distinctly alpine. The chír pine so common in sub-Himalayan forests extends up to 6500 feet. At this height and 1000 feet lower the ban oak (Quercus incana), grey on the lower side of the leaf, which is so common at Simla, abounds. Where the chíl stops, the kail or blue pine (Pinus excelsa), after the deodár the most valuable product of Himalayan forests, begins. Its zone may be taken as from 7000 to 9000 feet. To the same zone belong the kelu or deodár (Cedrus Libani), the glossy leaved mohru oak (Quercus dilatata), whose wood is used for making charcoal, and two small trees of the Heath order, Rhododendron arborea and Pieris ovalifolia. The former in April and May lightens up with its bright red flowers the sombre Simla forests. The kharshu or rusty-leaved oak (Quercus semecarpifolia) affects a colder climate than its more beautiful glossy-leaved relation, and may almost be considered sub-alpine. It is common on Hattu, and the oaks there present a forlorn appearance after rain with funereal mosses dripping with moisture hanging from their trunks. The firs, Picea morinda, with its grey tassels, and Abies Pindrow with its dark green yew-like foliage, succeed the blue pine. Picea may be said to range from 8000 to 10,000 feet, and the upper limit of Abies is from 1000 to 2000 feet higher. These splendid trees are unfortunately of small commercial value. The yew, Taxus baccata, is found associated with them. Between 5000 and 8000 feet, besides the oaks and other broad-leaved trees already noticed, two relations of the dogwood, Cornus capitata and Cornus macrophylla, a large poplar, Populus ciliata, a pear, Pyrus lanata, a holly, Ilex dipyrena, an elm and its near relation, Celtis australis, and species of Rhus and Euonymus, may be mentioned. Cornus capitata is a small tree, but it attracts notice because the heads of flowers surrounded by bracts of a pale yellow colour have a curious likeness to a rose, and the fruit is in semblance not unlike a strawberry. Above 8000 feet several species of maple abound. which has been introduced into English shrubberies. The great vine, The chinár or Platanus orientalis, found as far west as Sicily, grows to splendid proportions by the quiet waterways of the Vale of Kashmír. The undergrowth in temperate Himalayan forests consists largely of barberries, Desmodiums, Indigoferas, roses, brambles, Spiraeas, Viburnums, honeysuckles with their near relation, Leycesteria formosa, Vitis Himalayana, whose leaves turn red in autumn, climbs up many of the trees. Of the flowers it is impossible to give any adequate account. The flora is distinctly Mediterranean in type; the orders in Collett's Flora Simlensis which are not represented in the Italian flora contain hardly more than 5 per cent. of the total genera. The plants included in some of these non-Mediterranean orders are very beautiful, for example, the Begonias, the Amphicomes (Bignoniaceae), Chirita bifolia and Platystemma violoides (Gesneraceae), and Hedychium (Scitamineae). More important members of the flora are species of Clematis, including the beautiful white Clematis montana, anemones, larkspurs, columbine, monkshoods, St John's worts, geraniums, balsams, species of Astragalus, Potentillas, Asters, ragworts, species of Cynoglossum, gentians and Swertias, Androsaces and primroses, Wulfenia and louseworts, species of Strobilanthes, Salvias and Nepetas, orchids, irises, Ophiopogon, Smilax, Alliums, lilies, and Solomon's seal. Snake plants (Arisaema) and their relation Sauromatum guttatum of the order Araceae are very common in the woods. The striped spathe in some species of Arisaema bears a curious resemblance to the head of a cobra uplifted to strike. Orchids decrease as one proceeds westwards, but irises are much more common in Kashmír than in the Simla hills. The Kashmír fritillaries include the beautiful Crown Imperial.

Fig. 21. Firs in Himálaya.

Fig. 22. Chinárs.

Fig. 23. Rhododendron campanulatum.

Alpine Himálaya.—In the Alpine Himálaya the scanty tree-growth is represented by willows, junipers, and birches. After 12,000 or 12,500 feet it practically disappears. A dwarf shrub, Juniperus recurva, is found clothing hillsides a good way above the two trees of the same genus. Other alpine shrubs which may be noticed are two rhododendrons, which grow on cliffs at an elevation of 10,000 to 14,000 feet, R. campanulatum and R. lepidotum, Gaultheria nummularioides with its black-purple berry, and Cassiope fastigiata, all belonging to the order Ericaceae. The herbs include beautiful primulas, saxifrages, and gentians, and in the bellflower order species of Codonopsis and Cyananthus. Among Composites may be mentioned the tansies, Saussureas, and the fine Erigeron multiradiatus common in the forest above Narkanda. In the bleak uplands beyond the Himálaya tree-growth is very scanty, but in favoured localities willows and the pencil cedar, Juniperus pseudosabina, are found. The people depend for fuel largely on a hoary bush of the Chenopod order, Eurotia ceratoides. In places a profusion of the red Tibetan roses, Rosa Webbiana, lightens up the otherwise dreary scene.

CHAPTER VII

FORESTS

Rights of State in Waste.—Under Indian rule the State claimed full power of disposing of the waste, and, even where an exclusive right in the soil was not maintained, some valuable trees, e.g. the deodár in the Himálaya, were treated as the property of the Rája. Under the tenure prevailing in the hills the soil is the Rája's, but the people have a permanent tenant right in any land brought under cultivation with his permission. In Kulu the British Government asserted its ownership of the waste. In the south-western Panjáb, where the scattered hamlets had no real boundaries, ample waste was allotted to each estate, and the remainder was claimed as State property.

Kinds of Forest.—The lands in the Panjáb over which authority, varying through many degrees from full ownership unburdened with rights of user down to a power of control exercised in the interests of the surrounding village communities, may be roughly divided into

The first are forests of deodár, blue pine, fir, and oak in the Himálaya above the level of 5000 feet. The hill forests occupy the lower spurs, the Siwáliks in Hoshyárpur, etc., and the low dry hills of the north-west. A strong growth of chír pine (Pinus longifolia) is often found in the Himálaya between 3000 and 5000 feet. Below 3000 feet is scrub forest, the only really valuable product being bamboo. The hills in the north-western districts of the Panjáb and N.W.F. Province, when nature is allowed to have its way, are covered with low scrub including in some parts a dwarf palm (Nannorhops Ritchieana), useful for mat making, and with a taller, but scantier growth of phuláhí (Acacia modesta) and wild olive. What remains of the scrub and grass jangal of the plains is to be found chiefly in the Bár tracts between the Sutlej and the Jhelam. Much of it has disappeared, or is about to disappear, with the advance of canal irrigation. Dry though the climate is the Bár was in good seasons a famous grazing area. The scrub consisted mainly of jand (Prosopis spicigera), jál (Salvadora oleoides), the karíl (Capparis aphylla) and the farásh (Tamarix articulata).

Management and Income of Forests.—The Forest Department of the Panjáb has existed singe 1864, when the first Conservator was appointed. In 1911-12 it managed 8359 square miles in the Panjáb consisting of:

It was also in charge of 235 square miles of reserved forest in the Hazára district of the N.W.F. Province, and of 364 miles of fine mountain forest in the native State of Bashahr. In addition a few reserved forests have been made over as grazing areas to the Military Department, and Deputy Commissioners are in charge of a very large area of unclassed forest.

No forest can be declared "reserved" or "protected" unless it is owned in whole or in part by the State. It is enough if the trees or some of them are the property of the Government. In order to safeguard all private rights a special forest settlement must be made before a forest can be declared to be "reserved." In the case of a protected forest it is enough if Government is satisfied that the rights of the State and of private persons have been recorded at a land revenue settlement. After deducting income belonging to the year 1909-10 realized in 1910-11, the average income of the two years ending 1911-12 was £81,805 (Rs. 1,227,082) and the average expenditure £50,954 (Rs. 764,309).

Sources of Income.—In the mountain forests the chief source of income is the deodár, which is valuable both for railway sleepers and as building timber. The blue pine is also of commercial value. Deodár, blue pine, and some chír are floated down the rivers to depots in the plains. Firwood is inferior to cedar and pine, and the great fir forests are too remote for profitable working at present. There are fine mountain forests in Chitrál, on the Safed Koh, and in Western Wazíristán, but these have so far not even been fully explored. The value of the hill forests may be increased by the success which has attended the experimental extraction of turpentine from the resin of the chír pine. The bamboo forests of Kángra are profitable. At present an attempt is being made to acclimatize several species of Eucalyptus in the low hills. The scrub jangal in the plains yields good fuel. As the area is constantly shrinking it is fortunate that the railways have ceased to depend on this source of supply, coal having to a great extent taken the place of wood. To prevent shortage of fuel considerable areas in the tracts commanded by the new canals are being reserved for irrigated forests. A forest of this class covering an area of 37 square miles and irrigated from the Upper Bárí Doáb Canal has long existed at Changa Manga in the Lahore district.

Forests in Kashmír.—The extensive and valuable Kashmír forests are mountain and hill forests, the former, which cover much the larger area yielding, deodár, blue pine, and firs, and the latter chír pine. The total area exceeds 2600 square miles.

CHAPTER VIII

BEASTS, BIRDS, FISHES, AND INSECTS

Fauna.—With the spread of cultivation and drainage the Panjáb plains have ceased to be to anything like the old extent the haunt of wild beasts and wild fowl. The lion has long been extinct and the tiger has practically disappeared. Leopards are to be found in low hills, and sometimes stray into the plains. Wolves are seen occasionally, and jackals are very common. The black buck (Antilope cerricapra) can still be shot in many places. The graceful little chinkára or ravine deer (Gazella Bennetti) is found in sandy tracts, and the hogdeer or párha (Cervus porcinus) near rivers. The nílgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) is less common. Monkeys abound in the hills and in canal-irrigated tracts in the Eastern districts, where their sacred character protects them from destruction, though they do much damage to crops. Peafowl are to be seen in certain tracts, especially in the eastern Panjáb. They should not be shot where the people are Hindus or anywhere near a Hindu shrine. The great and lesser bustards and several kinds of sand grouse are to be found in sandy districts. The grey partridge is everywhere, and the black can be got near the rivers. The sísí and the chikor are the partridges of the hills, which are also the home of fine varieties of pheasants including the monál. Quail frequent the ripening fields in April and late in September. Duck of various kinds abound where there are jhíls, and snipe are to be got in marshy ground. The green parrots, crows, and vultures are familiar sights. Both the sharp-nosed (Garialis Gangetica, vern. ghariál) and the blunt-nosed (Crocodilus palustris, vern. magar) crocodiles haunt the rivers. The fish are tasteless; the rohu and mahseer are the best. Poisonous snakes are the karait, the cobra, and Russell's viper. The first is sometimes an intruder into houses. Lizards and mongooses are less unwelcome visitors. White ants attack timber and ruin books, and mosquitoes and sandflies add to the unpleasant features of the hot weather. The best known insect pest is the locust, but visitations on a large scale are rare. Of late years much more damage has been done by an insect which harbours in the cotton bolls.

Fig. 24. Big game in Ladákh.

Key: 1, 3, 7, 9, Chiru or Tibetan Antelope. 2, Argalí or Ovis Ammon. 4, 6, 8, Bharal or Ovis nahura. 5, Yak or Bos grunniens. 10, 11, 12, Uriál or Ovis Vignei. 13, Bear skin.

Game of the Mountains.—If sport in the plains has ceased to be first rate, it is otherwise in the hills. Some areas and the heights at which the game is to be found are noted below:

Fig. 25. Yáks.

Shooting in Hills

Shooting in Hills.—The finest shooting in the north-west Himálaya is probably to be got in Ladákh and Baltistán, but the trip is somewhat expensive and requires more time than may be available. In many areas licenses have to be obtained, and the conditions limit the number of certain animals, and the size of heads, that may be shot. For example, the permit in Chamba may allow the shooting of two red bear and two thár, and when these have been got the sportsman must turn his attention to black bear and gural. Any one contemplating a shooting expedition in the Himálaya should get from one who has the necessary experience very complete instructions as to weapons, tents, clothing, stores, etc.

Sport in the Plains

(a) Black Buck Shooting.—To get a good idea of what shooting in the plains is like Major Glasford's Rifle and Romance in the Indian Jungle may be consulted. As regards larger game the favourite sport is black buck shooting. A high velocity cordite rifle is dangerous to the country people, and some rifle firing black powder should be used. It is well to reach the home of the herd soon after sunrise while it is still in the open, and not among the crops. There will usually be one old buck in each herd. He himself is not watchful, but his does are, and the herd gallops off with great leaps at the first scent of danger, the does leading and their lord and master bringing up the rear. If by dint of careful and patient stalking you get to some point of vantage, say 100 yards from the big buck, it is worth while to shoot. Even if the bullet finds its mark the quarry may gallop 50 yards before it drops. Good heads vary from 20" to 24" or even more.

Fig. 26. Black buck.

(b) Small game in Plains.—The cold weather shooting begins with the advent of the quail in the end of September and ends when they reappear among the ripening wheat in April. The duck arrive from the Central Asian lakes in November and duck and snipe shooting lasts till February in districts where there are jhíls and swampy land. For a decent shot 30 couple of snipe is a fair bag. To get duck the jhíl should be visited at dawn and again in the evening, and it is well to post several guns in favourable positions in the probable line of flight. 40 or 50 birds would be a good morning's bag. In drier tracts the bag will consist of partridges and a hare or two, or, if the country is sandy, some sand-grouse and perhaps a bustard.

CHAPTER IX

THE PEOPLE: NUMBERS, RACES, AND LANGUAGES

Growth of Population.—It is probable that in the 64 years since annexation the population of the Panjáb has increased by from 40 to 50 per cent. The first reliable census was taken in 1881. The figures for the four decennial enumerations are:

Incidence of Population in Panjáb.—The estimated numbers of independent tribes dwelling within the British sphere of influence is 1,600,000. The incidence of the population on the total area of the Panjáb including native States is 177 per square mile, which may be compared with 189 in France and 287 in the British Isles. As the map shows, the density is reduced by the large area of semi-desert country in the south-west and by the mountainous tract in the north-east. The distribution of the population is the exact opposite of that which prevails in Great Britain. There are only 174 towns as compared with 44,400 villages, and nearly nine-tenths of the people are to be found in the latter. Some of the so-called towns are extremely small, and the average population per town is but 14,800 souls. There are no large towns in the European sense. The biggest, Delhi and Lahore, returned respectively 232,837 and 228,687 persons.

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Fig. 27. Map showing density of population.

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Fig. 28. Map showing increase and decrease of population.

Growth stopped by Plague.—The growth of the population between 1881 and 1891 amounted to 10 p.c. Plague, which has smitten the Panjáb more severely than any other province, appeared in 1896, and its effect was seen in the lower rate of expansion between 1891 and 1901. Notwithstanding great extensions of irrigation and cultivation in the Rechna Doáb the numbers declined by 2 p.c. between 1901 and 1911. In the ten years from 1901 to 1910 in the British districts alone over two million people died of plague and the death-rate was raised to 12 p.c. above the normal. It actually exceeded the birth-rate by 2 p.c. Of the total deaths in the decade nearly one in four was due to plague. The part which has suffered most is the rich submontane tract east of the Chenáb, Lahore and Gujránwála, and some of the south-eastern districts. A glance at the map will show how large the loss of population has been there. It is by no means entirely due to plague. The submontane districts were almost over-populated, and many of their people have emigrated as colonists, tenants, and labourers to the waste tracts brought under cultivation by the excavation of the Lower Chenáb and Jhelam canals. The districts which have received very marked additions of population from this cause are Jhang (21 p.c.), Sháhpur (30 p.c.), and Lyallpur (45 p.c.). Deaths from plague have greatly increased the deficiency of females, which has always been a noteworthy feature. In 1911 the proportion had very nearly fallen to four females for every five males.

Increase and Incidence in N.W.F. Province.—The incidence of the population in the area covered by the five districts of the N.W.F. Province is 164 per square mile. The district figures are given in the map in the margin. The increase between 1901 and 1911 in these districts was 7½ p.c. There have been no severe outbreaks of plague like those which have decimated the population of some of the Panjáb districts.

Fig. 29. Map showing density of population in N.W.F. Province.

General figures for the territory of the Mahárája of Kashmír are meaningless. In the huge Indus valley the incidence is only 4 persons per sq. mile. In Jammu and Kashmír it is 138. The map taken from the Census Report gives the details. The increase in the decade was on paper 8½ p.c., distributed between 5¼ in Jammu, 12 in Kashmír, and 14 in the Indus valley. A great part of the increase in the last must be put down to better enumeration.

Fig. 30. Map showing density of population in Kashmir.

Health and duration of life.—The climate of the Panjáb plains has produced a vigorous, but not a long-lived, race. The mean age of the whole population in the British districts is only 25. The normal birth-rate of the Panjáb is about 41 per 1000, which exceeds the English rate in the proportion of 5 to 3. In 1910 the recorded birth-rate in the N.W.F. Province was 38 per 1000. Till plague appeared the Panjáb death-rate averaged 32 or 33 per 1000, or more than double that of England. The infantile mortality is enormous, and one out of every four or five children fails to survive its first year. The death-rate in the N.W.F. Province was 27 per 1000 in 1910. In the ten years ending 1910 plague pushed up the average death-rate in the Panjáb to 43½ per 1000. Even now malarial fever is a far worse foe than plague. The average annual deaths in the ten years ending 1910 were:

Fever is very rife in October and November, and these are the most unhealthy months in the year, March and April being the best. The variations under fevers and plague from year to year are enormous. In 1907 the latter claimed 608,685 victims, and the provincial death-rate reached the appalling figure of 61 per 1000. Next year the plague mortality dropped to 30,708, but there were 697,058 deaths from fever. There is unfortunately no reason to believe that plague has spent its force or that the people as a whole will in the near future generally accept the protective measures of inoculation and evacuation. Vaccination, the prejudice against which has largely disappeared, has robbed the small-pox goddess of many offerings. As a general cause of mortality the effect of cholera in the Panjáb is now insignificant. But it is still to be feared in the Kashmír valley, especially in the picturesque but filthy summer capital. Syphilis is very common in the hill country in the north-east of the province. Blindness and leprosy are both markedly on the decrease. Both infirmities are common in Kashmír, especially the former. The rigours of the climate in a large part of the State force the people to live day and night for the seven winter months almost entirely in dark and smoky huts, and it is small wonder that their eyesight is ruined.

Occupations.—The Panjáb is preeminently an agricultural country, and the same is true in an almost greater degree of the N.W.F. Province and Kashmír. The typical holding is that of the small landowner tilling from 3 to 10 acres with his own hands with or without help from village menials. The tenant class is increasing, but there are still three owners to two tenants. Together they make up 50 p.c. of the population of the Panjáb, and 5 p.c. is added for farm labourers. Altogether, according to the census returns 58 p.c. of the population depends for its support on the soil, 20.5 on industries, chiefly the handicrafts of the weaver, potter, leather worker, carpenter, and blacksmith, 9.4 on trade, 2.5 on professions, and 9.6 on other sources of livelihood.

Measures taken to protect agriculturists.—In a country owned so largely by small farmers, the first task of the Government must be to secure their welfare and contentment. Before plague laid its grasp on the rich central districts it was feared that they were becoming congested, and the canal colonization schemes referred to in a later chapter were largely designed to relieve them. But there is a much subtler foe to whose insidious attacks small owners are liable, the temptation to abuse their credit till their acres are loaded with mortgages and finally lost. So threatening had this economic disease for years appeared that at last in 1900 the Panjáb Alienation of Land Act was passed, which forbade sales by people of agricultural tribes to other classes without the sanction of the district officer, and greatly restricted the power of mortgaging. The same restrictions are in force in the N.W.F. Province. The Act is popular with those for whose benefit it was devised, and has effected its object of checking land alienation and probably to some extent discouraged extravagance. It has been supplemented by a still more valuable measure, the Co-operative Credit Societies Act. The growth of these societies in the Panjáb has been very remarkable, a notable contrast to the very slow advance of the similar movement in England. In 1913-14 there were 3261 village banks with 155,250 members and a working capital of 133¾ lakhs or £885,149, besides 38 central banks with a capital of 42¾ lakhs or about £285,000. Village banks held deposits amounting to nearly 37 lakhs, more than half of which was received from non-members, and lent out 71½ lakhs in the year to their members.

Tribal Composition.—Table I based on the Census returns shows the percentages of the total population belonging to the chief tribes. The classification into "land-holding, etc." is a rough one.

Fig. 31. Jat Sikh Officers (father and son).

Jats.—The Panjáb is par excellence the home of the Jats. Everywhere in the plains, except in the extreme north-west corner of the province, they form a large element in the population. In the east they are Hindus, in the centre Sikhs and Muhammadans, and in the west Muhammadans. The Jat is a typical son of the soil, strong and sturdy, hardworking and brave, a fine soldier and an excellent farmer, but slow-witted and grasping. The Sikh Jat finds an honourable outlet for his overflowing energy in the army and in the service of the Crown beyond the bounds of India. When he misses that he sometimes takes to dacoity. Unfortunately he is often given to strong drink, and, when his passions or his greed are aroused, can be exceedingly brutal. Jat in the Western Panjáb is applied to a large number of tribes, whose ethnical affinities are somewhat dubious.