Mac Curdy — Passing of a Connecticut Rock Shelter. 513 



feeling that she could not live there alone, departed, but not 

 until after she had pulled down the artificial front. Another 

 colored man and his wife came and took possession of the cave 

 for a time, although they never made any attempt to rebuild 

 the front, finding evidently that the cave met their needs well 

 enough just as it was. 



Mr. W. H. Farnham (brother of the last owner of the Cave), 

 who has lived at the Farnham homestead on Crescent street 

 for sixty-four years, says that the last occupant of the Cave, 

 Indian George, continued to live there until about 1856. 

 Indian George, who had " distinctly Indian features," lived 

 there alone for years as hunter and trapper with only the addi- 

 tional protection that a brush front to the Cave afforded. 



The first geological description of Pine Rock is from the 

 pen of James Gates Percival* : 



" Crossing an isthmus of the New Haven and Hamden plain 

 at the passage of the Farmington Canal, we meet a similar dike- 

 like range, that of Pine Rock, directed W.S.W. towards the 

 S.E. point of West Rock. This forms a nearly straight ridge, 

 occupied in its eastern part by a higher, more uniform line of 

 trap, abrupt to the South, where it apparently sinks below the 

 level of the adjoining plain, and bordered on the North by a 

 highly inclined mass of indurated (porphyroid) sandstone." 



Percival makes no mention of the Cave, or the sandstone 

 formation on the south, which had been removed by nature 

 to form it. The next notable contribution to the geology 

 of Pine Rock was by Professor James D. Dana.f Pine Rock, 

 like all the rocks previously mentioned, is composed chiefly of 

 trap. According to Dana the width of the principal mass of 

 trap (figs. 1-3) at Pine Rock is 300 feet, making it u one of 

 the widest dikes." The dip of the dike is 50° to 55° north- 

 westward, giving to the protecting wall of the Cave an incline 

 of 35° to 40° from vertical. A section of the dike and the 

 sandstone abutting on each side before denudation took place 

 is seen in fig. 2 ; while a section through the Cave is repro- 

 duced in fig. 4. Both Dana and Barrell believe that seashore 

 waves and breakers were the chief agent in the removal of the 

 sandstone on the south side, thus resulting in the formation of 

 the Cave. The surface of the overhanging wall of trap was of 

 fine texture and fissured, showing that ifc cooled in contact with 

 the sandstone. 



The maximum overhang of the wall of trap was fifteen to 

 twenty feet and the habitable portion of the Cave extended for 

 at least one hundred feet along the rock. It was a dry and 

 sunny shelter, facing the southeast. Since being vacated by 



* Report on the geology of the State of Conn. New Haven, 1842. 

 f On the four rocks of the New Haven region. New Haven, 1891. 



