PART 2,] Wynne; A geological recoiinoissance from the Imhcs. 
105 
and cretaceous fossils, tlie beds dipping diversely and presenting tbe appearance 
of fractured displacement. 
The valley is nai’row, scarcely a mile in width, the frontier line sometimes 
not more than half that distance from the road, and the surface is formed of a 
drab saline clay soil or alluvium, apt to harden at first on drying, then to pulverise 
into fine dust, and to form rapidly deep fluid mud on the access of rain, blear the 
village of Kuz-Usturzai,‘ the main stream is joined by another from the valley of 
Samilzai and Murrai, which re-enters the mass of the mountains to the northward 
for some 8 or 10 miles, and might therefore be likely to expose something of their 
geological relation. As is not unusual along the frontier, this recess containing 
some cultivable ground, is included within the British boundary, the “ red line” 
leaving the mountains outside; still it was considered expedient that I should not 
enter the valley without an increased guard and special arrangements, which the 
pressure of circumstances precluded. So far as could be seen, the ground within 
it was ti’aversed by low limestone ridges, partly continuous with, and partly re¬ 
peating, the features of the adjacent part of the main valley, where nothing excepit 
eocene beds were recognized. On the north-eastern and northem sides of this 
Murrai valley, the lofty limestone escarpment from the neighbourhood of Kohat 
was observed to sweep along, broken by ravines and plateau-like summits, towai-ds 
Khuyukkai Sir, culminating some miles to the westward at the tabular summits 
of blazzeoghar and Dupah Sir,—^the latter over 8,000 feet in height, faced to the 
south by stupendous cliffs, and overlooking the high valley of Tirah to the north. 
In these cliffs strong zones of gray limestone, alternating with much softer 
thick bands, pi'obably of shale, could be seen dipping at angles of 30° and 40° in 
northerly directions, the dip becoming more marked and steeper in the same direc¬ 
tion, away to the westward. The stream coming from these mountains brings down 
pebbles chiefly of dark gray limestone in which fossils are concealed or absent, but 
the rock looks and smells like the hill variety of the nummulitic limestone; there 
are also a few of light-coloured fossiliferous nummulitic limestone, others of a 
greenish semi-oolitic limestone, containing parts of bivalve shells with strongly 
marked umbones and many large blocks of hard white quartzite sandstone. 
The road to Hangu rises from the alluvium of this stream on to flat-topped 
Karexoah hills, fonned of horizontal boulder conglomerates, from 40 to 100 feet 
thick, beneath which are vertical grayish dull sandstones and bright red clays. 
These last are seen again edging the bases of long low nummulitic ridges to the 
northward, which dip into the valley in various northerly dii-ections. It here 
becomes evident that the Hangu valley is excavated upon the softer much dis¬ 
turbed red clays and sandstones underlying and interstratified with thick zones of 
the Alveolina and other upper nummulitic limestone, the Avhole arrangement 
being not unlike that of the Subathu beds in many places along the north of the 
Rawalpindi plateau, but on a much lai'ger scale. Deep excavation in the valley 
beds and the stony hills they form continue to the camping ground of Sherkot, 
12 miles from Kohdt, and there is nothing in the structure of the ground within 
British territory here to mark the westerly continuation of the discordance 
* Coimnoiily called “ Sthoorzee” by tbe natives. 
