The Press., 1893-07-06
tHartford Times-1 THE CLAY'S STORY.


 Geologists are agreed that this part of Connecticut was once great lake. One of the most observing of their number has lately traced the course of the ancient river, now the Connecticut, from this neighborhood to it's original mouth which, 1t appears, was at what is now the west border of Branford, on Long Island Sound, where Saltonstall Lake now Is, and twen- ty miles or more west of the present junc- tion of the Connecticut with the sea, at Old Saybrook. The upheaval of the Meriden Mountains and the Middletown hills, it is declared, put sudden stop to business on the old route, and by dam ming the flood of an ancient river as big as the present Mississippi or bigger, made lake, of uncertain but great size, which present site of Hartford; probably forty miles long, and perhaps twenty miles wide. This lake steadily filled and rose, until, at what must have been the lowest depression in the cross-line of opposing hills which constituted the dam, at the picturesque gorge now known as "the Narrows," it finally overfiowed. The wearing down of the existing bed of the river, from that point to the Sound, doubtless required ages for its full ac- complishment. During all that time the lake remained-full and quiet-until in time the river by erosion cut out its pres ent bed, all the way down-the dam in- cluded-leaving no other vestiges of the ancient dam made by the cross-line of high hills than the picture-like wooded heights which rise to-day so abruptly from the river on either side. Engineers surveys, it is said, show that the differ brook light and the Hartford docks is but [. about feet and inches. There was time when the river, all through the low CT valley, was an estuary of the sea, ex- tending northward as far as the site of the present Massachusetts town of North ampton. This may have been earlier than the Carboniferous Period. At any rate, it was an early experience
 u l6ll HI tuc duClcuN pSllOu6,
 Which the breeding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days. The sight of workmen laboriously get ting out the very stiff and difficult clay in the work of deepening the cellar of 8 house torn down on Main street, Hart ford, opposite the old Center Church, to make room for a greater building, sug- gested this ancient lake, which once cov- cred this part of Connecticut. Clay, it is said, is formed by the extremely slow de- posit of extremely fine particles of disin- tegrated feldspathic rocks, suspended in still water. These particles, fine enough
 to be practically microscopic, are of course deposited very slowly; so slowly, indeed, that the ages during which this
 lake rested here, were all required for the
 formation of the deep bed of hard and stiff clay, almost like Scotch "till ;" which
 now underlies, or shows itself in so great
 a part of the soil over the ancient lake
 bed; say, from Enfield falls to the Mar !, rows below Middletown, a distance of
 about forty miles. So compact and solid r is this lay-product of ages of deposition
 under still water, that the workmen em. ployed in deepening the cellar referred to
 could hardly blow it up with team of
 strong horses. On the east side of the !, river it is covered with very deep forma- } tion of sand !; and it is less abundant in any shape, on the east than on the west side of the present river. s.s
 It seems good while to look back to , the landing of the Pilgrims a good deal longer to cover the years between to-day and the landing of William the 7 Conqueror in England; but the latter pc f riod, of 827 years, is but as triae, z
 speck, in the long lapse of probable : time that marked the existence of tha
 old lake we speak of. There were ages
 of tropical climate here; and the ptero dactyl winged his way through the murky
 air, and many strange aquatic or amphib ious monsters flourished in the tepid wa
 lers of this ancient valley. One quee
 creature was the labyrinthodon, the hug
 toothed frog, almost as much crocodile al
 frog, and which was twice as big as biz @ dog. Mosquitoes may not have beer r much worse then than now; but ours ev 8 idently is pretty old world.