l82 MIDDLEM1SS: GEOLOGY OF HAZARA AND BLACK MOUNTAIN. 



and there upon the hills, there are villages, nearly all of small size 

 and often very much scattered and overlapping down the narrow 

 strips of alluvium lining the river-beds. As may be imagined, culti- 

 vable land is scarce, water on the porous limestone hills is often 

 a question of moment, and hence it is that these parts are but scantily 

 inhabited, and so much land is given up to the growth of firewood. 



Although it cannot be said to be difficult of access along certain 

 lines of road and along the principal valleys (for within a few miles of 

 the pebbly river-bed the gorge of the Hurroh R. is the main highway), 

 yet the crossing of these rugged limestone hills, often steeply scarped 

 and covered with the tough tenacious Sanatha, is sometimes less of a 

 pleasure than a necessity to the geologist, and many weary hours have 

 been spent forcing one's way through the dense undergrowth. 



In the extreme western part of this area the Hurroh valley in the 

 neighbourhood of Khanpoor at last opens out into a wide and smil- 

 ing plain, the strike ridges fall to still lower levels and many die out 

 under the alluvium in the direction of Oosman Khatir. 



(i) Sections in the gulees. 



The Mian-Jani, Bara Gali and Taumi hill-masses, composed of the 

 great slate-formation with prominent bands of 

 quartzite, form the last outcrop of the Slate 

 series in a southerly direction. It is parted from the Nummulitic 

 zone by a great long sinuous fold-fault parallel to the general strike 

 of the country. This has already been defined as the northern bound- 

 ary of the Nummulitic zone. The presumably lower palaeozoic, or 

 older, rocks of the Slate zone, and the great spread of nodular and 

 concretionary limestone of lower tertiary age are brought into direct 

 contact by means of this fault, which must be imagined as of the 

 nature of a great overthrust of the older rocks above the younger. 

 Only in one place— viz., at;Bukot Gulee — is there anything left of the 

 intermediate formations in the shape of a band about £ mile broad of 

 the Trias limestone already mentioned (page 175) ; whilst nowhere is 

 there an unfaulted boundary embracing a normal or inverted ascend- 

 ( 182 ) 



