6£ BLANF0RD : GEOLOGY OF WESTERN SIND. 



pearing beneath the alluvial plain ; whereas in other parts of the range 

 the same beds are exposed in a simple section, all the strata dipping to 

 the westward. To the north the section is complicated by faults, but to 

 the south the thickness of the Manchhar group diminishes greatly, and 

 west of Sekwa/n, near Tandra Rahim Khan, although both upper and 

 lower sub-divisions of the group are developed, and the uppermost con- 

 glomerate is exposed, the whole thickness of the Manchhar strata cannot 

 be much more than about 3,000 feet. The Manchhar beds are seen 

 west, south, and east of the Manchhar lake ; they are well developed, 

 and occupy a large plain to the east of the Laki range, and west of the 

 nummulitic limestone tract near Kotri and Jhirak; they re-appear in 

 many places in the different synclinal valleys to the west of the Laki 

 ranee, and they occupy a considerable tract of country east and north- 

 east of Karachi. But throughout these areas in Lower Sind the rocks 

 are not nearly so well seen as to the northward, the soft sandstones and 

 clays of the Manchhar group having been denuded into undulating 

 plains, covered and concealed in general by the pebbles and sands derived 

 from the neighbouring hills, which are formed of the comparatively hard 

 older tertiary rocks ; and it is far more difficult than it is in Upper Sind 

 to distinguish the different portions of the group, or to form a correct 

 idea of the thickness of strata exposed. 



The Manchhar beds extend along the edge of the sea, west of Kara- 

 Relations to Makran chi, almost to the end of Cape Monze, but no 

 group of Baluchistan. representative of this formation is seen for a con- 

 siderable distance to the westward of the Cape. The few exposures of 

 rocks seen near the shores of Sonmeani Bay are older tertiary, or perhaps 

 cretaceous, and the greater part of the country consists of alluvium, a 

 low cliff near the coast, north of Gadani, being composed apparently of 

 sub-recent deposits. But west of Sonmeani Bay, in the neighbourhood of 

 Hinglaj, a well-known place of Hindu pilgrimage, there are high hills 

 of hard greyish-white marls or clays, occasionally intersected by veins of 

 gypsum, usually sandy, and often highly calcareous. With this clay or 

 marl, bands of shaly limestone, dark calcareous grit, and sandstone, are 

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