2 Tne District of Dera Ismail li/ian, Trans-Indus. [No. 2, 
On the north, Dera Ismail Khan is divided from the Marwat 
plain by a spur of low hills running east from the Sulaiman range 
towards the Indus. There is one high peak in this low range, and 
on it is the sanitarium of Shaikhbudm. Entirely separate from the 
Shaikhbudm hills, though very near them, is an isolated mountain 
ridge overlooking the river Indus. This is described by Dr. 
Verchere under the name Bottah Boh, and is also known as the 
Khissor, or as the Kafir Kot, range. 
On the south, where the district adjoins Dera Ghazi Khan, there 
is no marked geographical boundary, but a very important ethno¬ 
logical one, viz., the line of division between Pathan and Baloch 
frontier tribes. 
On the east, we have already assumed the Indus as an arbitrary 
boundary. The total area thus defined is 3,577 square miles. 
The geological features of the plains do not call for much com¬ 
ment. The ‘kachhi,’ or belt of land along the bank of the Indus, 
is a friable and fertile sand, like the alluvial soil of most of our 
Indian rivers. The rest of the district has a clayey soil, hard, and 
level in dry weather, but readily cut into ravines by rain and by 
the mountain torrents. The hard unbroken surface, which extends 
for miles without a tree is called ‘ pat,’ The geology of the hills 
is of course more interesting. Some account of it, more particular¬ 
ly of the northern ranges, i. e. the Shaikhbudm and Kafir Kot hills, 
will be found in a series of papers contributed to this Journal by 
Dr. Verchere. To these, under the title “ Geology of the Western 
Himalaya and Afghan Mountains,” our readers interested in the 
subject may be referred, and chiefly to the third chapter, No. I. 
of the Journal, 1867. The Bottah Boh or Kafir Kot range is de¬ 
scribed as mostly composed of carboniferous limestone, resting on a 
quartzite. The lower hills of the Shaikhbudm range are composed 
of miocene sandstone, clay and conglomerate, though the Shaikh¬ 
budm mountain itself is of limestone. It is believed that the softer 
rocks which form the rest of the range were once much higher than 
they are now, reaching almost to the height of the Shaikhbudm 
peak itself, but they have been gradually washed lower and lower 
till now the solitary limestone summit remains, with only misera¬ 
ble hillocks, jagged and unclothed, below it. The Kafir Kot range 
abounds in fossils which have been fully described by Dr. Verchere, 
