"Numerous converging and intersecting railways, extensive manufactures, and a considerable West-India commerce, contribute to the life and wealth of this beautiful city. Its suburbs are adorned with tasteful villas, and afford inviting drives and charming prospects. Of principal interest among its suburban attractions are the crags known as East and West Rocks — two bold and striking bluffs of trap-rock, lifting themselves, in magnificent array of opposition, about four hundred feet out of the plain which skirts the city. Their geological origin was probably some anomalous volcanic convulsion; and their grim heights may have sentinelled, in remote ages of our planet, the flow of the Connecticut River between their august feet to the Sound."