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Table Mountain is thrown up by them (as marked by the arrows in the 
direction of fig. 5), makes a clear sweep over the flat table land which forms 
the summit of that mountain (about 3,850 feet high), and then plunges down 
with the violence of a cataract, clinging close to the mural precipices that form 
a kind of background to Cape Town, which it fills with dust and uproar. A 
perfectly cloudless sky meanwhile prevails over the town, the sea, and the level 
country, but the mountain is covered with a dense white cloud reaching to no 
great height above its summit, and quite level, which, though evidently swept 
along by the wind, and hurried furiously over the edge of the precipice, dissolves 
and completely disappears on a definite level, suggesting the idea (whence it 
derives its name) of a ‘table-cloth.’ 
** Occasionally, when the wind is very violent, a ripple is formed in the aerial 
current, which, by a sort of rebound in the hollow of the amphitheatre in which 
Cape Town stands, is again thrown up, just over the edge of the sea, vertically 
over the jetty, where we have stood for hours watching a small white patch of 
cloud in the zenith, a few acres in extent, in violent internal agitation (from the 
hurricane of wind blowing through it), yet immovable, as if fixed by some spell, 
the material ever changing, the form and aspect unvarying. The Table-cloth is 
formed also at the commencement of a ‘North-wester,’ but its fringes then 
descend on the opposite side of the mountain, which is no less precipitous.” 
Sir Samuel W. Baker in his Aight Years in Ceylon, pp. 145-148, 
gives the following account of a wind similar to the Helm Wind, 
but without the Bar, which occurs on the Hackgalla Mountain in 
Ceylon :— 
**From June to November, the South-west Monsoon brings wind and mist 
across the Newera Ellia mountains. Clouds of white fog boil up from the 
Dimboola Valley, like the steam from a huge cauldron, and invade the Newera 
Ellia plain through the gaps in the mountains to the westward. The wind 
howls over the high ridges, cutting the jungle with its keen edge, so that it 
remains as stunted brushwood, and the opaque screen of driving fog and 
drizzling rain is so dense that one feels convinced there is no sun visible within 
at least 100 miles. 
‘‘There is a peculiar phenomenon, however, in this locality. When the 
weather described prevails at Newera Ellia, there is actually not one drop of 
rain within four miles of my house in the direction of Badulla. Dusty roads, a 
cloudless sky, and dazzling sunshine astonish the thoroughly soaked traveller, 
who rides out of the rain and mist into a genial climate as though he passed 
through acurtain. The wet weather terminates at a mountain called Hackgalla 
(or more properly Yakkadagalla, or Iron Rock). This bold rock, whose sum- 
mit is about 6,500 feet above the sea, breasts the driving wind, and seems to 
command the storm, The rushing clouds halt in their mad course upon its 
