36 WYNNE : GEOLOGY OF THE SALT RANGE IN THE PUNJAB, 



CHAPTER 11. 



PART I. 



PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



Of itself, the Salt Range forms a prominent physical feature of North- 

 . „ , » Western British India, rising between the flat 

 N.-W. India. plains and thai, or desert, of the Lower Indus 



basin and the elevated Potwar* plateaii embayed between the outworks 

 of the Himalaya, Hindd Kush and Afghan mountains. It rises above 

 the adjacent tracts, but with a considerable relative difference of altitude 

 on either side, as do the Western Ghats above the Deccan and low coast 

 plains, or as the Himalaya range itself rises above the high plains of 

 Asia on one side, but stands at a much greater difference of level above 

 the low plains of India on the other. One analogy with the latter 

 range as to some physical peculiarities might even be carried further, the 

 general watershed of the adjacent countries in both cases lying north- 

 ward of the principal elevations and both being bordered to the south 

 by a fringe of coarse deposits brought down by swollen torrents from 

 the hills. 



Here, however, the physical analogy ceases ; the aspect, stratigra- 

 phical structure and forms of the two regions being even more dissimilar 

 than are their respective heights, formations of the same geological age 

 have, it is true, been found in both, and some few fossils from each have 

 been pronounced identical, but the petrographieal characters of the rocks 

 are totally different. 



The essential feature of the salt range is that it forms a bold escarp- 

 ment to the southwards, this character being 

 obscured in some places, by reason of the con- 

 torted state of the rocks, and in others very promiment, presenting a 



* Tliis plateau has several divisions witli different names, But that of one of them, 

 the Potwar, is often applied to the whole of the ground lying immediately north of the Salt 

 Eansje. 



\ 36 ) 



