e hundred miles
of its mountain walls facing the Indus are south of the railway from the
Indus to Quetta, and about 250 north of it. The railway with the passes and
plains about it, and the dominant hills which surround Quetta, divide
Baluchistan into two distinct parts. North of the railway line, hedged in
between Afghanistan and the plains of the Indus, stretch the long ridges of
rough but picturesque highlands, which embrace the central ranges of the
Suliman system (the prehistoric home of the Pathan highlander), where
vegetation is often alpine, and the climate clear and bracing and subject
to no great extremes of temperature. The average breadth of this northern
Pathan district is 150 m., but it narrows to less than 100 m. on the line
of the Gomal, and expands to more than 200 m. on the line of the railway.
Here all the main drainage either runs northwards to the Gomal, passing
through the uplands that lie west of the Suliman Range; or it gathers
locally in narrow lateral valleys at the back of these mountains and then
bursts directly eastwards through the limestone axis of the hills, making
for the Indus by the shortest transverse route. South of the railway lies a
square block of territory, measuring roughly 300 m. by 300, primarily the
home of the Brahui and the Baluch; but within that block are included
almost every conceivable phase of climate and representatives of half the
great races of Asia. Here, throughout the elevated highlands of the Kalat
plateau which are called Jalawan, the drainage gathers into channels which
cut deep gorges in the hills, and passes eastwards into the plains of Sind.
Beyond and south of the hydrographical area of the Jalawan highlands the
rivers and streams of the hills either run in long straight lines to the
Arabian Sea, north of Karachi, or, curving gradually westwards, they
disappear in the inland swamps which form so prominent a feature in this
part of south-west Asia. A narrow width of the coast districts collects its
waters for discharge into the Arabian Sea direct. This section includes
Makran. Baluchistan thus becomes naturally divided into two districts,
north and south, by an intervening space which contains the Sind-Pishin
railway. This intervening space comprises the wedge-shaped desert of Kach
Gandava (Gandava), which is thrust westwards from the Indus as a deep
indentation into the mountains, and, above it, the central uplands which
figure on the map as "British Baluchi