24 The Hanzinz Hills 



'*>*■"& 



The range of trap ridges, extending from Mounts Tom and Hol- 

 yoke in Massachusetts on the north, has a southerly trend, nearly 

 parallel to the Appalachian chain, till it reaches the Hanging 

 Hills, buttressed and sentineled by West Peak, in Meriden, where 

 it makes an abrupt turn to the east along West Mountain, South 

 Mountain, Cathole aud Mount Lamentation, when it bends 

 southward again through Middlefield, Durham, and so on, and 

 encloses the city of Meriden like the ramparts of a vast amphi- 

 theatre. An almost invariable feature of these ridges is that one 

 side is abrupt, and the other a moderate slope, the latter indi- 

 cating the direction of the flow from the elongated vent or crater. 

 When the direction of the ridge is from north to south the abrupt 

 side is on the west, and when the direction is from east to west 

 the abrupt side is on the south; thus all the ridges around Meriden 

 present a sort of mural front to the city. 



The Hanging Hills are seen to best advantage from the road 

 that follows the ridge south of Crow Hollow (why not call it Ra- 

 vendale), and crosses what is commonly known as Johnson's Hill. 

 From this outlook the bold, serrated ridge confronts the observer 

 on the north ; South Mountain and West Mountain, separated by 

 a narrow valley now appropriated by the city as a reservoir for its 

 water supply. The most westerly of these uplifts, West Mountain, 

 is riven at one point almost to its base by a gorge running north 

 and dividing the ridge into two sections, the eastern and the larger 

 one simulating a vast ruin with partially shattered walls and 

 crumbling towers, while the western section forms a bold promi- 

 nence nearly a thousand feet in height, being the highest of the 

 series in Connecticut. South Mountain, east of the reservoir, is 

 cleft into three sections by rifts in the rocky mass and gradually 

 rises from its eastern border to its western summit. 



Still eastward is Cathole Mountain, so called from a narrow de- 

 file that separates it from that just described. This defile, as it was 

 in a state of nature, suggested the famous pass of Thermopylae, 

 where, "between the mountain on the one hand and the morass up- 

 on the other," but one man could pass at a time. But the demands 

 of trade and travel have led to its enlargement and the highway 

 from Meriden to Kensington now passes through it, making one of 

 the most strikingly picturesque drives in Connecticut. 



These ridges have mostly been described as trap dikes, though 

 for reasons that will by and by appear, the term is by some 

 geologists considered inappropriate and misleading. That they are 

 made up entirely of eruptive rocks, however, that have sometime 



