A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
Force would degenerate to a “ dropping well,” and many beauties of the 
district would vanish entirely.” These lakes and tarns fulfil another 
important and useful purpose in serving as catchment basins or natural’ 
reservoirs for the immense quantities of rain water which the river beds 
would be otherwise unable to contain. Away from the hills and in the 
plains of Cumberland, the rainfall may be set down as normal. Thus I 
have before me through the courtesy of R. A. Allison, Esq., of Scaleby 
Hall, about six miles north of Carlisle, a statement of the rainfall at that 
place extending over a period of eleven years from 1889 to 1g00. In 
the year 1889 the amount of rain was as low as 29'7 inches; in 1891, 
| 36°9 inches ; and the average for the whole period of eleven years, 33°3 
inches. For purposes of comparison I subjoin the following table of 
mean annual averages, viz. :— 
Inches Inches 
The Stye, Borrowdale. . . . . 165 Gowbarrow Park, Ullswater . . . 72 
Seathwaite . . . . . . . . 140 Esk Hause. . . . . . 1... 72 
Sprinkling ‘Tarn. . . . = » » Yan Beawell Pike. . . « » » » « 6g 
Styehead Tarn. . . . . . . «W10 Keswick . . . 2. 1... ee 59 
Stonethwaite. . . . . . . . 107 Watermillock, Ullswater . . . . 55 
Wythburn, Thirlmere. . . . . 90 Milrehouse, Bassenthwaite . . . . 50 
Wastdale Head. . . . . . . 88 Penrith *% . . . 2. 1 1. 38 
Watendlath . . . . . . . . 82 = Scaleby Hall, Carlisle? . . . . . 33 
Matterdale Common . . . . . 80 
REMARKS ON THE HELM WIND 
Helm Wind is a local name of uncertain derivation (but supposed 
to be so called from the cloud which, like a cap or helmet, covers the 
top of the mountain) applied to a very violent wind blowing from some 
eastern point of the compass, but mostly due east, at the foot of the 
mountains known by the name of the Cross Fell range, and confined both 
in length and breadth to the space contained between the Helm and 
Helm Bar, hereafter described. 
For a better understanding of this phenomenon, it may be necessary 
first to point out the peculiar situation of the neighbourhood where it 
occurs. 
The counties of Cumberland and Westmorland are bounded on 
their eastern side by a chain of mountains, separately known by different 
names along the range, but collectively called the Cross Fell range, some- 
times the Pennine chain, from their Roman name /pes Penini. ‘The 
general direction is from north-west by north to south-east by south, and 
the northern extremity is at Talkin and Tindale Fells, not far from which 
the railway from Carlisle to Newcastle crosses to the east, the highest 
point of which is rather more than 400 feet above the level of the sea. 
Tindale Fell rises abruptly to a considerable height, Talkin Fell more 
gradually, and the hills rise by degrees in the above-named direction 
1 The same rainfall as at Exeter, and slightly in excess of that recorded for Birmingham and 
Aberdeen, i.e. 31 inches. 
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