MA11WAT AND KHASOK HILLS. G9 



escarpments, with the usual fan talus of coarse detritus at foot, sloping 

 upwards to a height of 300 feet above the plain. 



The singularity of this feature, together with the less marked sinu- 

 osities of the escarpment north of Kafir Kot (South), near Bilot, &c, 

 suggests former curvatures of the Indus having impinged upon the range 

 at these points, though there now remain no traces of elevated ground on 

 the eastern side of the river to have caused its deflection. 



Within the recess, its erosion having reached deeply into the struc- 

 ture of the range, a fine section of the rocks is 

 Cliff series. 



exposed and some new features are presented. By 



similar rough observations to those previously mentioned, the height of 

 the cliffs here was estimated at about 1,650 feet above the plains, all 

 of which height, except some 300 feet, being occupied by a regular 

 ascending series. In this there is exposed, beneath the carboniferous 

 formation which forms the top of the escarpment, a mass of clays, 

 sandstones, and boulder beds resting upon a very prominent thick zone 

 of some 450 or 500 feet of alternating dolomite and gypsum bands. 

 From beneath these at one place on the western side of the embayment, 

 a lower group of some 250 feet of purple sandstones is seen to project. 

 This purple sandstone has the very uniform character of that which 

 I have distinguished as the Purple Sandstone group in the Salt Range, 

 but the mass of gypsum and dolomite succeeding it has no analogue 

 in any other section of the whole range with which I am acquainted. 

 Gypseous and magnesian beds are found among the red rocks of the 

 boulder group at Omar Keyl, as previously noticed; they are not, 

 however, in the same quantity, or so distinctly separated into a great 

 group by themselves, plainly underlying the red boulder band. The 

 distance (19 miles) between the localities might be considered suffi- 

 cient for the change to have taken place in, but in none of the sec- 

 tions near the intervening exposure of the infra-carboniferous rocks at 

 Bilot was this great gypseous group to be seen. Hence it appears 

 probable that the conditions favourable to the production of these chetni- 



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