A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
be united. It is only in the case of an agricultural people, with com- 
munistic habits, who enter at once into full and undisputed possession of 
the land, that any such division on the lines followed in the Weald can 
be possible. 
In Cumberland, all the factors were different. The soils, instead of 
being related in composition to the underlying rock as they are in the 
Weald, are derived, in the great majority of cases, direct from the mantle 
of glacial deposits. These are spread far and wide over all the lowlands 
and the slopes of most of the hill-sides, and they usually bear only a remote 
relation in composition to that of the rocks upon which they lie. Hence, 
almost no definite geographical relationship subsists between the different 
kinds of superficial deposits in one part as compared with another. 
Furthermore, even where the soil is thin, and solid rock does protrude at 
the surface, it is exceptional to find rock of the same kind extending far 
enough to impart any definite agricultural type to the soil throughout 
any but the fell lands* of a Cumberland parish. For this reason, even 
the best geological maps of Cumberland afford but little information 
regarding the value of the land from an agricultural point of view. In 
the Weald the case is far otherwise, as already mentioned. The only 
part of Cumberland where even an approach is made to the type of 
parish boundary found in the Weald, is along the strip of the county 
lying to the north-east side of the Eden. But even in that case, the 
neat and definite coincidence observable between the geological structure 
and the parish boundaries in the southern area can hardly be said to 
exist. 
The third factor, whose discussion comes perhaps more within the 
province of the historian, relates to the ethnology of the earlier settlers 
in the district. Taking it for granted that these earlier peoples were 
Celtic, it may be safely assumed that they were but little disposed to 
apply themselves wholly to agricultural operations. With them it would 
be a matter of but little moment whether the soil upon which they lived was 
suited, or was not suited, for the growth of any particular kind of crop. 
If fishing and hunting were to be had, and sufficient rough pasture could 
easily be found for their cattle, their needs were supplied. Then, again, 
continual conflicts with their neighbours—inevitable under the circum- 
stances—were hardly conducive to uniformity of land-tenure over any 
large area. So their parish boundaries were determined by a variety of 
circumstances. 
If we are right in supposing that the Anglian and other Teutonic 
settlers in Cumberland gradually supplanted the Celtic aborigines, instead 
of taking possession of the land all at once, we can easily understand how 
they took over the land with its older boundaries much as they found 
them, and afterwards had but small need to modify those boundaries to 
any important extent. 
* It may be remarked here that the word ‘ fell,’ in the north of England, is not synony- 
mous with ‘hill’ ; the word simply means land as yet unenclosed, and is exactly synonymous 
with the Norman word ‘ forest.’ 
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