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voyage of Madoc-ap-Owen, which took place in 1170! John 

 Filson, in his history of Kentucky, has revived these tales 

 of the first travellers ; according to him, Captain Abraham 

 Chaplain saw Indians arrive at the post of Kaskasky, and 

 converse in the Welsh language with some soldiers who 

 were natives of Wales. He also believes, that " far off, to 

 the west, on the banks of the Missouri, there exists a tribe 

 which, besides the Celtic language, has also preserved some 

 rites of the Christian religion." (Hist, of Kent. p. 122,) 

 Captain Isaac Stewart asserts, that on the Red River of 

 Natchitotches, at the distance of 700 miles above its mouth, 

 in the Mississipi, near the confluence of the river of Post (?) 

 he discovered Indians with a fair skin and red hair, who con- 

 versed in Welsh, and possessed the titles of their origin. 



They produced, in proof of what they said of their arrival 

 on the eastern coast, rolls of parchment carefully wrapt up 

 in otter-skins, and on which great characters were written 

 in blue, which neither Stewart, nor his fellow-traveller 

 Davey, a native of Wales, could decypher." (Mercure de 

 France du 5 Nov. 1785.) These are, no doubt, the Welsh 

 books recently mentioned again in the French journals. 

 {Revue encyclopedique, No. 4, p. 162 > and article Homme in the 

 Diet, des sciences nat., Vol. xxi, p. 392.) We may observe 

 first, that all these testimonies are extremely vague for the 

 indication of places. The last letter of Mr. Owen, repeated 

 in the journals of Europe (of the 11th February, 1819), 

 places the posts of the Welsh Indians on the Madwaga, and 

 divides them into two tribes, the Brydories and the Chado- 

 gians. " They speak Welsh with greater purity than it is 

 spoken in the principality of Wales (!) since it is exemx^t 

 from anglicisms ; they profess Christianity strongly mixed 

 with Druidism." We cannot read such assertions without 

 recollecting that all those fabulous stories which flatter the 

 imagination are renewed periodically under new forms. The 

 Jearned and judicious geographer of the United States, Mr. 



