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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 13, p. 75.

IIAZfi RA DISTRICT 75 lies like a wedge of British territory driven in between Kashmir on the east and the independent hills on the west. Hazara presents every gradation of scenery, altitude, and climate. The valley of the Harroh, only 1,500 feet above sea-level, merges into the Hazara plain, an area of 200 square miles, with a mean elevation of 2,500 feet. Higher again Physical aspects. is the Orash plain, where Abbottabad lies between 4,ooo and ~;,ooo feet above the sea. Lastly the Kagan valley, com- prising one-third of the total area, is a sparsely populated mountain glen, shut in by parallel ranges of hills which rise to 17,000 feet above the sea. Never more than 15 miles apart, these ranges throw out spurs across the valley, leaving only a narrow central gorge through which the Kunhar river forces an outlet to the Jhelum. The scenery is picturesque and ever-changing. Distant snowy ranges to the north ; the higher mountains of Hazara, clothed with pines, oaks, and other forest trees, the lower ranges covered with grass and brushwood ; cultivation appearing on every available spot, from the small terraces cut with great labour in the hill-sides to the rich irriga- tion of the Haripur and Pakhli plains ; water in every form, from the swift torrents of the Kunhar and Jhelum and the strong deep stream of the Indus, to the silent lakes of the Kagan valley-all these suggest Kashmir and offer a vivid contrast to the arid plains of Northern India. Hazara may be described geologically as a section of the earth's crust coming well within the area of Himalayan disturbance, although the trend of the hill-ranges is altered from north-west-south-east to north-east-south-west. It is divisible into four distinct zones or belts of formations separated from one another by faults with over- thrust, and each zone exhibits more plication or metamorphism as the higher and more north-westerly regions are approached. The first, to the north-west, is composed of metamorphic schists and sills of gneissose granite, and includes most of the country north-west of Abbottabad and the Dor valley. The second zone is composed of a great and ancient slate series, with outliers of younger rocks in the high, isolated hill-groups north-east of Abbottabad. The next in order, together with the outliers of that just described, comprises a great series of marine deposits beginning with a marked unconformity and basal conglomerate, and extending from the infra-Trias (Devonian?) up to Nummulitic, the rocks being mostly limestones or dolomitic limestones with subordinate shales and sandstones. In this series the Trias and Nummulitic are well developed, while the Jura Cretaceous strata are comparatively thin. Last of all are the Upper Tertiary zone of Murree sandstone and the lower and upper Siwalik sandstones and conglomerates to the south, stretching away into the Rawalpindi plateau.