"The western frontier of India is, for a length of 600 miles, bounded by Biluchistan and territories inhabited by Biluch tribes, and for 300 miles Biluch country intervenes between our border and Afghanistan. The plains of the Punjab and Sind run along the boundary of Biluchistan, and at a distance of from 25 to 50 miles the Indus pursues a course, as far down as Mithunkot, from north to south, and then winds south-west through a country similar to that of Egypt. A belt of cultivation and beyond that the desert . . . this line of hills (the Eastern Sulimani) extends as a continuous rampart with the plains running up to the foot of the range, and having an elevation of 11,000 feet at the Tukl-i-Suliman, and of 7,400 near Fort Munro (opposite Dera-Ghazi-Khan), gradually diminishes in height and dwindles away till it is lost in the plains near Kusmore, at a point 12 miles from the Indus. The strip of low-land country on the west bank of the Indus up to the foot of the hills is called the _Derajat_. It is cut up and broken by torrents, the beds of which are generally dry wastes, and the country is, except at a few places where permanent water is found, altogether sterile and hot. If we view the physical aspect looking north and north-west from Jacobabad, we notice a wide bay of plains extending between the broken spur of the Sulimani, and a second range of hills having a direction parallel to the outer range. This plain is called the Kachi, extends in an even surface for 150 miles from the Indus at Sukkur, and is bounded on the north by successive spurs lying between the two great ranges. The Kachi, thus bounded by barren hills on all sides but the south, is one of the hottest regions in the world. Except where subject to inundations or within reach of irrigation it is completely sterile--a hard clay surface called _Pat_,--and this kind of country extends around to the east of the spur of the Suliman into the Derajat country. Subject to terrific heats and to a fiercely hot pestilential wind, the Kachi is at times fatal even to the natives." [Illustration: Entrance to the Bolan Pass, from Dadur.]