EASTERN PLATEAU. 363 



In these dark carbonaceous sbales there is much pyrites^ aud a white 

 aluminous efflorescence occurs, enclosing plant-stems and pieces of brown 

 lignite. In another place close by, the thickness, from the shale No. 6 

 to the coal No. 3, was ten feet, and the upper coal was three feet six 

 inches, the lower being one foot nine inches thick ; the black shales 

 below were only six feet, and an underlying whitish clay bed ten feet, 

 so that the coal and associated beds appear to have been very irregularly 

 deposited. The shales contain nodules of hard clay enclosed in gypsum, 

 and the lowest rock of the series exposed is a thick mass of rapidly 

 weathering, variegated, white, green, and red clays answering probably 

 to the hsematitic beds of other places. 



Sections of the rocks are frequently exposed on the turnpike road 



leading from Pind-Dadun-Khan and Khewra north= 

 Pid road. Ascent. 



wards via Choya-Saidan-Shah. The first ascent 



exposes much-broken beds of the purple sandstone, overlying the red 

 and purple marl, and overlaid by the flaggy and shaly silurian fossil 

 zone, its laminse being often marked by black glossy surfaces. Above 

 these are grey sandstones, and a fifty-feet band of fine hard oolitic rock, 

 belonging to the magnesiau sandstone group. Higher up, the beds are 

 dark and shaly, with thin layers of pale green-banded sandstone, glauco- 

 nitic, and bearing obscure Annelide markings, and above all are fine- 

 grained strong white sandstones which might make good building stone, 

 but are much shaken. 



To the northward, the salt-marl is brought into contact with the beds 

 just described by the slip or fault which has been noticed as running 

 along the back of these outer hills. The marl, which contains hard flaggy 

 compact layers of an apparently calcareous or dolomitic rock, is here 

 intersected by a deep road-cutting exposing quantities of gypsum and the 

 usual want of structure. Further up the ascent, the road leaves the marl^ 

 and the purple sandstone is again seen in its proper position, followed by 

 the two succeeding groups. Still higher up the slope, slipping of the beds 

 has taken place, and the red salt-crystal zone is seen to contain a mass of 

 hard, sandy, metamorphic-pebble conglomerate, of exceedingly confused 



( 163 ) 



