CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF CONTRASTS
The North-West Frontier Province has been describ-
ed as the land of contrasts — " of light and shade, of gaiety
and tragedy, of romance and reality, of kindness and
hatred, of consistencies and contradictions." Its climate
varies from the blazing heat of the sun-baked Derajat to
the bracing cold of the salubrious Hazara, with its vista
of pine woods and snow-capped hills. The natural scenery
too presents the same variations. In the picturesque,
mountainous north, dense forests and terraced cultivation
alternate with waving, dark green fields of sugarcane and
corn and charming orchards teeming with luscious fruit
of the finest variety — peach and plum, apple and apricot,
pear and grape, orange and pomegranate. Across the Salt
Range and to the south stretch a clay desert and the
treeless plain of Lakki and Marwat flanked by the un-
inviting, howling wilderness of the storm-swept Waziri-
stan hills. There is in the province a profusion of natural
wealth side by side with the poverty of the people.
The boundaries of the North-West Frontier country
have varied from time to time. During the early Aryan
period they appear to have extended from the valley of the
Indus to some far away tracts in Central Asia and included
the major part of Afghanistan, the present North-West
Frontier Province and also the southern valley of the
Indus in Sindh and perhaps Baluchistan. From about
the 6th century B.-C. onward, that part of the country
which is known as the North-West ~ Frontier Province
formed part of the Iranian, the Greek, the Kushan, the
Gupta, the Turki, the Ghorian, the Moghal and the Dur-
rani Empires down to 1819. In 1849, after about 20 years
of Sikh rule, the area now identifiable as the Settled Dis-
tricts was taken over by the British.