America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D.

by Judge Toulmin, of Mississippi, will be read with keen interest by

the opinion that a nation of white men speaking the Welsh language reside high up the Missouri. By some the idea is treated as nothing but the suggestion of bo

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of war presents nothing of the kind. The probability, too, is that the persons who constructed them were, at that time, acquainted with the use of iron. The situation of these fortifications, which are uniformly in the most fertile land of the country, indicates that those who made them were an agricultural peo

ion on the subject. Having never met with any of the persons who had seen these white Americans, nor eve

nternal marks of authenticity. The country described was altogether unknown in Virginia when the relation was given, and probably very little known to the Shawanese Indians. Yet the account of it agrees very remarkably with later discoveries. On the other hand, the story of the large animal, though by no means incredible, has something of the air of fable, and it doe

ad of the Roanoke River, in Virginia, and carried to the Shawanese Nation. Having stayed there about two years and a half, he found that five young men of the tribe had a desire of attempting to explore

frequently came within sight of it as they proceeded on their journey. After travelling about thirty days through pretty farming woodland, they came into fine open prairies, on which nothing grew but long luxuriant grass. Here was a succession of these, varying in size, some being eight or ten miles across, but one of them was so long that it occupied three days to travel through it. In passing through this large prairie, they we

neither tusks nor horns. After passing through the long prairie, they made it a rule never to enter on one which they could not see across, till they had supplied themselves with a sufficiency of jerked venison to last several days. After having travelled a considerable time through t

the heat of summer, appeared to them to be covered with snow. The sight naturally excited considerable astonishment; but, on

tice of the party to exercise the office of spokesman in rotation; and when the language of any nation through which they passed was unk

assing the mountains they entered a fine fertile tract of land, which having travelled through for several days, they accidentally met with three white men in the Indian dress. Griffith immediately understood their language, as it was pure Welsh, though they occasionally made use

mplexion. The three men took them through their villages for about the space of fifteen miles, when they came to the council-house, at which an assembly of the king and chief men of the nat

arlike people. It was conceived that they were sent to look out for a country for their nation; that if they were suffered to return, they might expect a body of powerful invaders; but that i

ation; that they were actuated merely by private curiosity, and had no hostile intentions; that it was their wish to trace the Missouri to its source; and

king advanced and gave him his hand. They abandoned the design of putting him and his companions to death, and from that moment treated him with the utmost friendship. Griffith and the Shawanese continued eight months in the nation, but we

ued range of settlements on the river for fifty miles, and there were within this space three large watercourses which fell into the Missouri, on the banks of each of which they were likewise settled. He supposed that there must be fifty thousand men in the nation capable of bearing arms. Their clothing was skins well dressed. Their houses were made of upright posts and barks of

heir tomahawks were so great a curiosity, and the people of the country were so eager to handle them, that their canoe was completed with very litt

two years and a half. Griffith supposed that when they travelled they went at the rate of about fifteen miles per day. He stayed but a few months with the Indians after his return, as a favorable opportunity offered itself to him to

st confidence in his account of himself and his travels, and has no more doubt of the truth of his relations than if he had seen the whole himself. Whether Griffith be still alive or not he does not know. Whether his ideas be correct or not, we shall probably have a bett

am,

umble s

y Tou

, December

ugh they pursued a different branch of the Missouri from the one which was supposed to lead to the Welsh Indians, they discovered straggling In

found them as high up as one thousand miles from the junction with the Mississippi. Captain Lewis was a Welshman. In their long and perilous journey, extending to the Colu

use of the cataracts and falls, next to Niagara the grandest on this globe, and reaching to the Rocky Mountains, and some idea may be formed of the great extent of this river. The entrance of the Yellow-Stone is nearly two thousand miles above its mouth. A journey of one thousand miles up the Missouri a century or more since, while it was an undertakin

d-mines of Missouri are extremely valuab

by the salt licks of Nebraska, which, when the springs are low

s, the soil is sandy and in many places remarkably white. The writer himself has often seen on

ermixed with no other people by marriage: there was not a dark-skinned man in the nation." Could they without intermixture have increased to such considerable numbers as to be able, as he supposes, to put into the field "fifty thousand men capable of

hom assert that they saw some old manuscript books, and that they had horses for the chase. His statement, however, offers no contradi

t no more than that the radical structure of the language was still preserved and could be readily distinguished, though some of the words had undergone modi

tions of this people; for if they were the descendants of Madoc some traces of the Christi

e does relate bears every inter