THE INDIAN PENINSULA 141

and Sind. All the southern districts of the Punjab are
flat: the eye rests on nothing but a wide vista of monotonous
 dust-coloured plain, or on vast stretches of wheat
cultivation, according to the season of the year. Between
Lahore and Multan a dreary expanse of sandy waste,
supporting a scattered jungle of undersized trees and
scrub (chiefly tamarisk), is the distinguishing feature of
the country bordering the railway on either side. Similar
characteristics prevail throughout the Doab tracts between
the Punjab rivers from the Sutlej to the Indus. Only
when approaching the riverain, or a district subject to
flood or irrigation, is there any marked change in the
scenery. Then indeed close set fields and a wealth
of trees and hamlets indicates the productive nature of
the alluvial soil when sufficient water for cultivation is
available. Parts of the Chenab and the Indus, near their
junction, are so thickly bordered with trees as to remind
one of the ancient tradition of forests on the Indus; and
lower, about the Sind reaches of the river, are many
square miles of tamarisk jungle which much more nearly
approach a forest growth than do the scattered and ragged
jungles of the north country.
ln the extreme north of the Punjab, the districts of
Rawal Pindi and of Peshawur, west of the Jehlam, as well
as the northerly extension into the hills east of the Indus,
which includes the Khagan Valley, are all hill districts
with characteristics entirely distinct from the Doab. The
dividing line is near the Salt range, which practically
extends across the Indus from the southern Kohat district
to Pind Dadun Khan on the Jehlam. North of this
remarkable feature (which contains an unexhaustible
supply of salt underlying multicoloured clays and sanddrifts
 of recent formation) there is a vast network
of broken ground intersected by ravines and nullahs.
These enclose the railway from Jehlam to Rawal Pindi,
and surround the latter city with an almost impassable
maze of intricate ground. Farther north the Peshawur
Valley opens out into a comparatively level plain—a plain
which is highly cultivated and covered with tree growth—