186 WYNNE: TRANS-INDUS SALT REGION, KOHAT DISTRICT. 



certainly have not much the look of the lowest beds, and many of the 

 sandstones are soft, yet the preponderance of alternations of reddish or 

 red clay and light gray fragile sandstones prevailing westward, near 

 Kurar mountain, is not marked here, owing perhaps to superficial con- 

 cealment of all but the hardest o£ these soft sandstones. 



There is something in the incoherent nature of the sandy parts of 



the superficial covering, the local flatness of the 

 Quicksands. 



ground, or the disposition of subsoil drainage that 



tends to produce quicksands (having doubtless an exaggerated charac- 

 ter as to depth) along the margin of a sluggish stream which passes 

 through the village of Shakkurdurra (Shakkardarra) . These are small 

 circular patches in the damp ground where the hard rushy surface is 

 suddenly converted into liquid sandy mud, perhaps kept moist by the 

 presence of little springs. No stick could be found long enough to 

 sound one of these, and their dangerous softness was said to vaiy at 

 different seasons. 



For four miles southward of Shukkurdurra (Shakkardarra) the 

 harder strata project in the form of small hills, 

 soutfTof S^Sdarra! P arts of contortions showing steep dips to the 

 north and south. In this country, too, the hard 

 crystalline pebbles from the newer beds of the series are strewed 

 over the ground ; these increase in quantity, ascending the bed of the 

 stream which passes by Hussunshood (Hassanshud), but it is not until 

 close to this place that the soft gray sandstones are found to contain 

 some small pebbly strings. Further south they increase in quantity 

 on the surface to the exclusion of soil or anything else, thickly sheeting 

 the ground and forming, as is their usual habit, smoothly dressed gentle 

 slopes. Yet even here no strong bands of conglomerate are found from 

 which they might have been derived. 



Within a mile south-westward of the above-named village, a rugged 



Craggy hills near Hus- g rou P of hills is reached at a place where <per- 

 sunshood (Hassanshud). pen dicular sandstones ' is marked upon the map, 

 ( 290 ) 



