46 
Records of the Geological Surrey of India. 
[VOL. Till. 
Geological Notes on the Khabeean hills in the Upper Punjab, 
by A. B. Wynne, e.g.s.. Geological Survey of India. 
The Khareean* liills are perhaps better known, to the natives of the country at least, 
by the name of PiibM, which seems to have an application to their low but broken forms. 
They are situated in the Upper Punjab, seven or eight miles southward of the river Jhilam, 
and station of the same name, forming the southern of the three minor chains which link, as 
it were, but without absolute continuity, the salt range to the Western Himalayan mountains. 
These Puhbi hills extend from near the battle-field of Olulianwala, and closer to the 
banks of the Jhilam, in an east-north-easterly direction for about twenty-eight miles in the 
direction of Bhimber (in Kaslnnere territory), but sink into a sandy nallah about four miles 
short of that town. They form throughout a low rugged chain, cut into by numerous 
ravines, having a general width of three or four miles, and a summit elevation of some 4 to 
500 feet above the plains of the Jhilam and the more extensive ones of the Goojrat district. 
Their culminating point is towards the western end of the range, and their declination 
eastwards is very gradual. In the latter direction they are crossed by the grand trunk road 
from Calcutta to Peskawur and by the Northern State Railway iu progress of construction. 
The aspect of the bills is monotonously arid, barren and rugged, presenting everywhere 
steep or precipitous descents into dry sandy nullahs. Towards the eastward, the ‘ Puhhis ’ 
are further apart, and scattered cultivated patches occur between the hills, which are separated 
by that peculiar labyrinth of ravines known in this country and the Pot’war as ‘ lehuddera .’f 
The hills are composed of an enormous accumulation of sandstones, sands, conglomerates 
and clays belonging to the upper part of the tertiary rocks of the Northern Punjab. 
Prom their position it was thought probable that here the Sivalik sub-division of these 
rocks might be developed, and their relations to the underlying beds discovered if the same 
marked unconformity, as occurs in other places, existed. On examination no trace of uncon¬ 
formity within these hills has been found, and though the soft and friable nature of most of 
the strata would answer well enough for the description of Sivalik rocks in other regions, 
their whole character suggests their identity with the uppermost deposits of the Pot’war to 
the north, similar clays and sandstones there having been always found to pass regularly 
downwards into the lower and older portion of the series, so far as has been gathered from 
observations hitherto made. 
The arrangement of the Pnbhi rocks is simple; they form a distinct anticlinal, the axis 
of which coincides with the higher parts of the range, a downward inclination of this at 
either end bringing at least a portion of the beds round to form the opposite sides of the 
hills. With the general form described there are many undulations of the rocks in bold 
* The word is pronounced by the uatives Kharee-in, and the famous battle-field of Chilianwala they speak of 
as Chelianmojeearri. 
t As characteristics of these Pubbi hills It may be mentioned that the chief obstacles to pedestrian progress, 
besides the innumerable khuds and ravines, are the difficulty of obtaining foot hold on steeply sloping clay surfaces 
covered with small pebbles, sandstone fragments or noddies of kunkur which slide under the feet, the insecure 
nature of vertically weathored parts of the soft sandstones and clays, and the trying strain iu the dry sandy beds 
of nalahs. 
A striking feature of the ground is the contrast between its dryness and the abundant evidence of abrasion 
by water. 
Although now so dry and barren, these hills were once populous and even thickly inhabited, as is evident from 
the very numerous largo village ruins scattered over them, and the size of some of the graveyards belonging to these 
villages,—fast yielding to the atmospheric erosion which frequently exposes the graves, showing that the potsherds 
left by the inhabitants were more lasting than their bones. 
Other relics of a perhaps still older period are brick blocks of large size, though the buildings formed of these 
have all hut disappeared. 
