MARWAT AND KHASOR HILLS. 57 



Section IV. — The double chain of the Marwat and Khasor Hills. 



A few words will suffice to describe the whole of the Nila Roh from 



Tangdarra to Shekh Budin. It is a long narrow 

 Nila Roh. . . . ... 



anticlinal fold in the upper Siwalik sandstones, its 



steepest side to the south-east and its longer slopes towards the Bannu 

 plain. These sandstones contain, as is usual, mammalian "bones and teeth, 

 but apparently only in such numbers as would require an organised and 

 special quest to obtain anything like a satisfactory collection. Occasion- 

 ally specimens met with by the more intelligent shikaries in their 

 pursuit of Markhor, or by herdsmen, have reached the hands of visitors 

 to Shekh Budin, and thus their existence has become known. My 

 efforts in the vicinity only procured a few specimens of little worth. 



The parallel outer, or Kiri Khasor, range lying south-east of the Nila 

 Roh, from its greater variety of structure, will 



Kiri Khasor range. 



require more notice. This annex of the Marwat 

 hills, separated from the Nila Roh by the long parallel valley of the 

 Lwargi pass, draining to both ends, is in parts both wider and more 

 lofty than the Nila Roh itself, the main trans-Indus continuation of the 

 whole Salt Range anticlinal. 



In the north and south Basti valley at Kundal (not the main Algad 

 Section at northern °^ ^ ne Rumani Khel part of the valley), the tertiary, 

 end - red and drab clays and pale gray sandstones dip to 



the westward at 25°, alternating with and mainly underlying the same 

 sort of Dangot thick sandstones as form the Nila Roh. On the east 

 side of this valley rise the sloping beds of the northern end of the 

 Khasor range, also dipping west, and sheeted by a ha,rder conglomerate 

 composed of quartz, quartzite, sandstone, limestone, red granite ; in short, 

 all the harder rocky debris derivable from the Khasor range and some 

 from unknown sources. This conglomerate forms a bottom bed to the 

 tertiary series, and rests with but slightly apparent discordance upon a 

 thick zone of earthy and cherty, well-bedded, magnesian, unfossiliferous 

 limestone. The ground is rather broken, and subject to displacements on 

 the outcrop, but still this magnesian band appears to be between 100 and 

 200 feet in thickness. 



( 267 ) 



