222 Memoranda on the Peshawur Valley. [No. 3, 
without a driver, when each of his eyes is covered by a conical 
leathern blinker. 
In the valley generally the soil is a strong retentive clay, which 
is strikingly fertile wherever there is a full supply of water. There 
are in some places sandy tracts, but the extent of these is limited, 
and almost the only absolutely unfertile parts are those situated 
near the circumference of the valley, towards which, nearly every 
where so far as I have examined, (and the circumstance has been 
noted by several previous observers,) there exists a wide talus of 
shingle. This, which slopes towards the middle of the valley, is often 
several miles in breadth and in many places (e. g. near Abazai,) more 
than 40 feet thick, as seen at cuttings. These shingly tracts are 
unproductive, but not universally so, as in some places the shingle 
is covered over by deep layers of a bluish, marly soil, the existence of 
the former at such places being only discovered at sections natural 
or artificial. This shingle is in general composed of fragments, 
more or less rolled, of the harder rocks of the surrounding hills; 
being mostly of limestone, and hard carbonaceous slate, and more 
rarely a red clayey rock. 
The north-eastern part of the valley is much broken up by spurs 
and outlying low hills from the mountain mass bounding it in that 
direction. The latter, at least that part which General Cotton’s 
Expedition passed through, is, in many places, plentifully strewn 
with blocks and shingle of a syenitic porphyry, which is occasion- 
ally seen im situ, as at Mungaltana on the flanks of Mahdbun, and at 
Kubbul on the Indus. Even fragments of this rock, however, are 
very rare throughout the rest of the valley. 
Many of the spurs along this, the north edge of the valley, are 
composed of a very hard, dark coloured slate similar to that of 
Attock, generally dipping strongly towards the north or west; on 
this side, also, micaceous schist frequently occurs, as in the ridge 
parallel to the Indus at Kubbul, and in the Takht-i-Bai spur in 
EKusofzai; and a micaceous schistose earthy limestone, near Michni, 
Shubkuddur and Abazai; in the lower ridges and isolated hills the 
rocks generally dip towards the north-west and north. Near Michni 
there is an outburst of trap, under micaceous and quartzose schists. 
On the east and south side of the valley as at mount Mitt near 
Attock,—the ridges south of Nowshera—the range on which, (the pro- 
