RAILWAYS

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recall the heather and the braes. Rawal Pindi is the recognised
 point of departure for the hills of Murree (Mari)
and Kashmir, which are connected with the station by an
excellent road. At Hassan Abdal, between Rawal Pindi
and Attok, another road branches to Abbottabad and the
Black Mountain, and a third connects Naoshera (between
Attok and Peshawur) with Mardin, Malakand, and Chakdara.

Of all the remarkable points on this journey perhaps
the Attok bridge and the view therefrom is most striking.
The stern grandeur of the white waters of the Indus sliding
between black and broken cliffs fringed with gleaming
strips of sand, seems rather to partake of Himalayan or of
Tibetan scenery than that of the plains of India. It is as
if the Indus had carried down with it a reproduction of
one of its own reaches from the mountains about Gilgit;
but Indus scenery never lapses into prettiness anywhere
in its course. Even ils beauty, where the river breaks
through the salt ranges into the plains of the Derajat east
of Bannu, is significant of strength and sterility rather
than of landscape loveliness.
Peshawur, the most important of our northern military
 frontier posts (like Rawal Pindi), possesses a twosided
 character. There is a pretty cantonment, beautifully
laid out, and rich in all the charm of varied garden vege-‘ation
 which its northern climate favours. Round about
are the everlasting hills, the peaks which overlook the
Khaibar and the Kabul River on one hand, and the hills
of Swat on the other, with the triple-headed mountain of
« Mor” over-topping them. This is the mountain of the
i wild vine and the ivy,” where Alexander sacrificed to his
gods ; at the foot of which dwelt the Nyszans of classical
history. No wonder that the Amirs of Afghanistan still
regard with longing eyes this, the fairest of cities that ever
was an Afghan possession—the jewel of the Durani empire—the
 winter capital of the Durani emperors.
The other point of view is towards the city, where an
overcrowded and much-mixed population of the Indo-Afghan
 borderland rivals Rawal Pindi in the criminal