DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY: UPPER TERTIARY ZONE. 223 



The surface configuration of the Murree ridge and of its continu- 

 ations N.N.E. and S.W. is extremely characteristic. Its general 

 colour alone, which depends on the chocolate-purple clays and shales 

 interbedded with the sandstones, is a very striking peculiarity, inas- 

 much as, if viewed from the north along the gullee ridge, the whole 

 surface of the ground appears a reddish purple. The Murree beds, 

 being one of the lower members of the Upper Tertiaries which 

 characterise the Sub-Himalayan tract, do not here, as in many parts 

 of the Himalaya, form a separate hill-range divided off from the 

 main ranges behind by a low upland valley of the nature of the 

 Dehra Dun and other similar valleys. The structure here is more 

 nearly paralleled by that at the foot of the Naini Tal hills, where, as 

 in this case, the Sub-Himalayan tract has become, as it were, welded 

 into one whole with the older rocks behind and above it. 



A conspicuous feature of this Upper Tertiary zone is the steady 

 dip of the strata down against the faulted boundary to the north- 

 west. This, as is usual in such a massive well-bedded rock as the 

 Murree sandstone, gives a long gentle dip slope to the north, and a 

 succession of picturesque scarps and secondary dip slopes to the 

 south. Near Murree, where the forest is conserved, the northern 

 slopes are fairly wooded. To the south-west again, where the level 

 of this zone descends rapidly, the country is bare, and the low brown 

 sandstone ridges, made up of disconnected pieces by reason of the 

 streams which cut through them across the strike, possess nothing 

 but low scrub-jungle, until dying away and sinking under a thin 

 layer of alluvium towards Shah-ki-Moorpoor and Shah-ala-Ditta they 

 pass into cultivated lands interrupted here and there by little rough 

 stony lines of crags, where the harder bands of sandstone or pseudo- 

 conglomerate stand out in relief. Towards the north-east, in the 

 direction up the Jhelum valley, the Kaneir N. for some way marks off 

 the north-west boundary of this zone. In this direction the hills 

 flatten out at their top, lower gradually in elevation, and become, 

 covered with terraces of fields, one above the other, as at Dehvul, 

 Beerot, etc. After the Kaneir N. leaves the boundary to join the 



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