PHYSICAL FEATURES. SI 



report; points which belong to the physical geology of the range must, 



however, be briefly noticed. 



The situation of the Salt Range is in itself peculiar ; it crosses that 



embayment where the lower ground of Western 

 Orographical position. , i • i i • 



Hindustan projects into the high mountain regions 



of Asia, and it forms a separation between two tracts which have very 



unequal altitudes as seen in fig. 1, a rough profile of the country from 



Swat to the Chenab crossing the range near Sardi. 



This recess is embayed by the high mountains of the North-West 

 Himalaya on the east, and the Sulimdn, Hala, Augustan,* and Khyber 

 mountains on the west; while, to the north, elevated mountainous 

 ground intervenes between it and the snowy ranges of the Hindu Kush. 

 In the regions where such great physical features approach and the 

 resultants of their oriffinatins: forces encountered one another, concen- 

 trated disturbance might be expected to produce intense distortion. la 

 the Salt Range this is observable, both stratigraphical contortion on the 

 smaller scale and sinuous curvature of the range itself marking its 

 eflPect. Including its continuation Trans-Indus, the whole chain appears 

 to have yielded to lateral out-thrust, or forces proceeding from the 

 greater mountain chains on either side, and to have been compelled 

 to accommodate itself to shortened longitudinal limits. (See diagram j 

 Plate VIII, fig. 2.) 



The principal or western sinuosity of the range (bordering the 

 Indus for some 70 miles) follows, in a measure, the converging axial 

 directions of the more lofty ranges, its curvature conforming to the 

 angk between these lines. f To the east, however, the strike of the Tilla 

 ridge is distorted so as to fold back upon itself in a curve resembling 

 the letter S, 



* A name applied by natives to the mountains west of the Punjab. 



t Sir Eoderick Murchisou's mention of the Salt Range as the " first step in ascending 

 from the Lower Panjab to the Himalaya" accords -svith its features, but its parallelism to 

 the Valley of Kashmir and the " mighty Himalaya" is anything but evident. Quart. Journ, 

 Oeol. Soc, Lond., Vol. IX, p. 189= 



( ^1 ) 



