44

INDIA

rest of the Indian frontier, the marked parallelism in
strike in its principal mountain ranges is the prominent
feature of their conformation. There are districts in
Makran (as there are in the basin of the Zhob north of
Quetta) where many square miles of area are tight packed
with an outcrop of innumerable little ridges, knife edged,
and jagged, yearly diminishing in height under the influence
 of denudation, so that the intervening valleys are
gradually filling and the ridges gradually lowering, until
a line of sharp edges, presented by the thin strata of indurated
 clay protruding from the ground at an angle

Mountain Fides

Fic. 15.—The Orography of Makrin.

indicating the general dip of the formation, is frequently the
only sign left of a buried barrier of miles in length. And
this natural action of levelling down, the progress of
which can be so readily discerned on the smaller scale, is a
dominant feature throughout the larger Makran mountain
system ; so much so, that Makran might almost be called
the land of disintegrating hills. The result to the traveller
who crosses its stony wastes is inconceivably disagreeable.
 Excepting along the lateral valleys which intersect
this Makran wilderness from end to end he either encounters
 little but stone-covered flats where boulders lie
thick as the pebbles on a sea-shore, or else he stumbles
across the sharp edges of a protruding slate stratification,
equally aggressive and more dangerous. The coast-line
of Makran is separated from the hills by a narrow sill