THE LATABAND AND KABUL. 



4& 



into an irregular group of steep hills, with small, usually waterless 

 valleys. 



On the north, west and south, the whole valley is filled with 

 the same sands, clays and conglomerates which 

 extend past Sarobi to the Kabul river on the 

 north and to the flanks of the Karkacha range in Tezin on the west : 

 they also appear to extend up to the Lataband (10, ~ ; 3). 



From Jalalabad a second road to Sarobi runs for the most part along 

 the right bank of the Kabul river. For the first 



rlve V r a ?e e iow°Sar t !bi KabUl few miles > as far as the Surkhab, it lies on 

 alluvium, then rises over the eastern end of the 

 Siah Koh, where the Kabul river issues through the Daronta gorge. 

 This is cut through porphyritic gneissose granite, of which the foliation 

 planes strike E.N.E.-W.S.W. with a very high dip to N.N.E. 

 From Daronta a broad valley, filled with Siwalik beds, extends along 

 the northern flanks of the Siah Koh to Kach-i-Mahomed Ali Khan. 

 Nothing but soft sand-rock and conglomerate is seen in situ through- 

 out the whole distance of about 20 miles, but the streams from the Siah 

 Koh bring down pebbles of granite and dark basic rocks, chiefly 

 epidiorite and allied hornblendic types. The Siwaliks continue for about 

 four miles beyond Kach-i-Mahomed Ali Khan, when they give place to 

 steeply dipping clay slates, well-bedded and cleavable. These continue 

 for about three miles, becoming gradually more and more schistose 

 until they are found as metamorphosed schists in contact with granite. 

 The latter rock is the typical Himalayan biotite-granite, with veins of 

 schorl-granite; it forms the high ridges on either side of the Kabul 

 river, and continues — interrupted ouly once by a belt, about 1^ miles in 

 width, of slate and schist — to within <'3 miles of Sarobi, where it is covered 

 by the Siwaliks of the Jagdallak-Sarobi area, 



The Lataband and the Kabul Plain. 



From Sarobi to Kabul, there are fchrlse roads : a northerly one along 

 the Kabul river through the gorge known as Tangi Ghuru, a central 



