Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 1).djvu/23

 ij AREAS AND BOUNDARIES Highlands Plains sq. miles sq. miles (I) Pan jab, British 11,000 86,000 (2) Panjab, Native States 12,000 24,500 (3) Kashmir 81,000 — (4) North West Frontier Province 6,500 6,500 (5) Tribal Territory • 25,500

On the north the highlands include the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan (Siwalik) tracts to the south and east of the Indus, and north of that river the Muztagh-Karakoram range and the bleak salt plateau beyond that range reaching almost up to the Kuenlun mountains. To the west of the Indus they include those spurs of the Hindu Kush which run into Chitral and Dir, the Buner and Swat hills, the Safed Roh, the Waziristan hills, the Suliman range, and the low hills in the trans-Indus districts of the North West Frontier Province.

Boundary with China.—There is a point to the north of Hunza in Kashmir where three great mountain chains, the Muztagh from the south-east, the Hindu Kush from the south-west, and the Sarikol (an offshoot of the Kuenlun) from the north-east, meet. It is also the meeting-place of the Indian, Chinese, and Russian empires and of Afghanistan. Westwards from this the boundary of Kashmir and Chinese Turkestan runs for 350 miles (omitting curves) through a desolate upland lying well to the north of the Muztagh-Karakoram range. Finally in the north-east corner of Kashmir the frontier impinges on the great Central Asian axis of the Kuenlun. From this point it turns southwards and separates Chinese Tibet from the salt Lingzi Thang plains and the Indus valley in Kashmir, and the eastern part of the native state of Bashahr, which physically form a portion of Tibet.

Boundary with United Provinces.—The south-east corner of Bashahr is a little to the north of the great Kedarnath peak in the Central Himalaya and of the