Waziristan has been described by Oliver as “a land of high and difficult hills, deep and rugged defiles, brave and hardy people, in their way as independent and patriotic, and, in the presence of the common enemy, hardly less united, than the famous compatriots of Tell. Geographically and politically the two have several points in common; and as regards the mass of hills that lie between the Gomal and the Tochi, or Dawar Valley, of which Kaniguram is about the centre, this is more especially true. The east front is protected by the bare hills, held by the Batannis; beyond which are ravines, flanked by precipitous cliffs, which occasionally widen out to enclose small valleys fairly fertile, from one hundred to one thousand yards wide, but narrowing again as they ascend. Not unfrequently the mouth is a mere gorge or tangi (waist), where the water forces its way through a range crossing it at right angles and forming a colossal natural barrier. In these valleys, and the small strips of alluvial land which border the base of the higher mountains, locally called _Kaches_—which are quite a distinctive feature of the whole range—there is often a good deal of cultivation, the whole carefully terraced, and irrigated by means of channels cut out of the hill sides, a great deal of ingenuity and skill being expended in leading the water from field to field.”
The principal rivers in Waziristan are the Kurram, Kaitu, Tochi and Gomal; the valley of the last-named is particularly barren, there being hardly any cultivation to be seen between Murtaza and Khajuri Kach, and no villages along the river itself. The tributaries of the Gomal in southern Waziristan flow through the wide and open, but stony and barren plains of Wana, Spin and Zarmelan. Indeed, Waziristan answers to the description Pathans give of their country when they tell us, that “when God made the world there were a lot of stones and rocks and lumber left over, which were all dumped down on this frontier, and that this accounts for its unattractive appearance.”