182 Account of the Lower Derdjdt. [No. 3. 



Some villages are remarkable for their date trees, which grow- 

 most luxuriantly, particularly in the vicinity of Dera Ghazi Khan, 

 and which used to yield a revenue alone of 8 or 9,000 rupees yearly 

 to the Seikh Government. 



The most fruitful portions of the land in the district are in the 

 hands of Hindus and Punjabi Musalmans, whilst the poorer allot- 

 ments are held by the simple and more hardy Beluchis. 



Some of the canals which I have already referred to, and of 

 which there are several in the district, are yearly cleared out by 

 the landholders themselves, as in other places of the Panjab gene- 

 rally, except at Dera Ghazi Khan itself, where Government 

 has goue to the expense of 15 and even 18,000 rupees yearly, to 

 clear them, and for which the Zamindars have to pay, over and 

 above the money settlement for their lands, and the percentage as 

 a road fund for keeping up and making new roads ; but it is a 

 remarkable fact, or was so at least a short time since, that the 

 canals thus cleared out, were never in the same efficient state as 

 those cleared out by the people themselves. 



The only places worthy of the name of towns in this dreary 

 district are, Dera Ghazi Khan and Mittunkot ; Jampur, Dera Din 

 Panah, and Mungrotah being merely good sized villages. The 

 other hamlets are mostly small and far apart, and generally of the 

 most squalid appearance, bespeaking the poverty and wretchedness 

 of the inhabitants. The general aspect of the district, with a few 

 exceptions in the vicinity of the river, where there are some fine 

 trees, is bare and dreary in the extreme ; the only relief to the 

 landscape and to the eye being the lofty mountains to the west, 

 of which and of whose people, we will now attempt a description. 



The hilly tract of country commences on the north from the 

 mountains which form the southern boundary of the river Zhobe, 

 and parallel to those eastern off-shoots or spurs from the Suliman 

 range, where the southern part of Daman in the Dera Ismaaeil 

 Khan district ends, and the most northern part of Dera Ghazi 

 Khan, viz. the Sanghar district commences ; as far south as the 

 parallel of Mittunkot, where both ranges, the Koh-i-siah or 

 Black range, as the Suliman mountains are now called, and the Koh- 

 i-Surukh or Bed mountains, as the lower chain is termed, make a 



