5 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
well-wooded, presenting in the spring and autumn " a
picture of waving corn lands and smiling orchards framed
by rugged hills ". Adjoining Peshawar and separated from
it by the Jawaki hills, lies the District of Kohat — " a
rough, hilly tract intersected by narrow valleys........"
The southern spurs of the Kohat hills gradually subside
into the Bannu plains, where irrigated by the Kurram
river is a tract " of unsurpassed fertility ", presenting a
striking contrast with the harsh desolation of the Kohat
hills.........To the east is the broad, level plain of
Marwat extending from Lakki to the base of Sheikh Budin
. hills. " A broken range of sandstone and conglomerate "
divides the Bannu plain from the daman or plain of Dera
Ismail Khan "which for the most part is a clay desert
formed by the deposits of the torrents issuing from the
Sulaiman range on the West."
Turning to the mountainous region between the Set-
tled Districts and Afghanistan, to the extreme north lies
the Agency of Dir, Swat and Chitral. Below Chitral are
the " thickly timbered forests " of Dir and Bajaur......
Between this Agency and the Khyber lie the Mohmand
hills, a rough, rocky country. The Khyber itself is " a
little narrow, gloomy gorge " with some scanty attempts
at cultivation but bristling with " forts, picket posts and
block houses". West and south-west , of the Khyber
comes the country of the Afridis and of the Orakzais.
South of the Kurram lie the " disorderly congeries of
Waziri Hills", intersected by the Tochi valley in the
north and the gorges that lead to Wana plain on the
south. These inhospitable hills are for the most part bar-
ren and treeless. But here and there they open into fertile
and well-irrigated dales, as for instance, round Shawal, the
summer grazing ground of the Darwesh Khel which is
thickly wooded.
Before the partition of 1947, the Province used to be
divided politically into four parts : (i) the Six Settled Dis-
tricts roughly representing the territory which was taken
over from the Sikhs in 1849 with a population of about 25
lakhs, (ii) the belt of tribal population numbering 13 to 14