PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



45 



and the singularly inaccessible canon called the Bakh ravine, which 

 intersects the whole range near Namal, having a length of about 

 a mile and a fall of nearly 350 feet (judging from the heights upon 

 the map). 



There are features connected with this ravine which make it ap- 

 pear strangely placed at this point. The streams which now discharge 

 through it look too small to have cut so large a gorge, even though this 

 may have been commenced when the ground to the north was less 

 worn down by denudation. The occurrence of boulder beds near where 

 the great rivers leave the Himalayas, and the existence of an uncon- 

 formable boulder accumulation at the north-eastern side of the ridge 

 close to the town of Namal, at the commencement of the ravine, would 

 suggest the possibility of this glen having once been a channel through 

 which a larger stream from the north, perhaps the Soan river, found 

 its way southwards before the gorge of the Indus was sufficiently 

 reduced and cut backwards to take off the main body of meteoric water 

 at a higher point. 



At present the Golar and Thrappi rivers, which unite and discharge 

 through the Bakh ravine, drain a comparatively small area north of 

 Sakesar summit. 



All the streams from the Tredian hills run in steep narrow gullies or 

 gulches, those to the south especially, and one of these has eaten for itself 

 a cavernous passage beneath a massive rocky spur ; they are sometimes 

 quite impracticable to follow up on foot. 



The water-parting or " divide^' of the range lies north of the prin- 

 cipal crest or edge, belonging indeed partly to 

 Water-parting. ^ k m • i 



the Potwar plateau. For some 45 miles m the 

 central portion it separates the heads of tributaries to the Indus from 

 those of torrents which tend towards the Jhelum, but never reach it, as 

 surface streams."^ From other parts of the range the drainage of both 



* That from Makrach forms a doubtful exception. 



( 45 ) 



