h on that day, and reached Mall in the
middle of the night. Padag to Kuchaki Chah, 13 miles, 756 yards; Kuchaki
Chah to Mall, 15 miles, 1,154 yards. Total, 29 miles, 150 yards.

It was freezing hard, thermometer 28 deg. Fahrenheit, and the wind bitterly
cold. My men felt it very much and so did my camels, which all became
ill.

We left Mall again very early the following morning, as I intended to
proceed direct to Nushki. There were two tracks here to Nushki, the old
and the new. The old track went in a straight line and was in
consequence some miles shorter; the new track more or less follows the
foot of the mountain range, probably taking this course for the
convenience of the several Beluch villages to be found in the Nushki
plain.

The rocky mountain range to the south got lower as we approached Nushki,
and was then crossed by another low range extending from north to south
while the longer and higher range stretched from north-north-east to
south-south-west. A few miles from Nushki we came across some most
peculiar and very deep cracks in the earth's crust. One could plainly see
that they were not caused by the erosion of water, but by a commotion
such as an earthquake. In fact, we came, soon after, to a place where the
whole sandy plateau had actually collapsed, and when we stood on the edge
of the portion which still remained unchanged, we could see it end
abruptly in perpendicular cliffs. What was the evident continuation of
the valley lay now some hundred or more feet below its former level. In
this lower valley there were a number of Beluch villages.

This crack and depression extends for no less than 120 miles, according
to Major MacMahon, who in 1896 went, I believe, along its entire length
into Afghan territory, and he describes it as "a well-defined, broad line
of deep indentations, in places as clearly defined as a deep railway
cutting. Springs of water are to be found along its course. The crack
extends north from Nushki along the foot of the Sarlat range, and then
diagonally across the Khwajah Amran range, cutting the crest of the main
range near its highest peak and crossing the Lora River. A well-marked
indentation was traceable at the edge of the plain near Murghachaman,
some 18 miles north of Chaman."

MacMahon states that the Beluch themselves attribute it to three
different earthquakes, of which accounts have been handed down by their
fathers, and at the time of which deep fissures appeared t