On which the learned Acosta remarks:
"Sed utrum divinarit Seneca, an fortuito ac temere cecinerit, quæri potest. Mihi verò divinasse videtur, sed eo genere divinationis, quod prudentes viri familiare habent."
Acosta further on writes thus:
"Scribit Hieronymus in epistolam ad Ephesios—'Quærirmus quoque quid sit. In quibus aliquando ambulastis secundum sæculum sit mundi hujus utrumnam et aliud quod non pertineat ad mundum istum, sed ad mundos alios, de quibus et Clemens in epistolâ suâ scribit, oceanus et mundi qui transipsum sunt.'"—J. Acosta, Societatis Jesu, De Naturâ Novi Orbis, lib. i., cap. xi.
"Lorsq' Alfonso V. permit en 1461 à Dom Henry de peupler les îles Açores, on trouva en celle de Cuervo une statue représentant un cavalier qui, de la main gauche, tenoit la bride de son cheval, et de la droite montroit l'occident, précisément du côte d'Amerique—on voyoit sur le roc une inscription en caractères inconnus, dont il seroit à souhaiter qu'on eût pris soin d'aporter l'empreinte en Europe; mais ces premiers navigateurs cherchoient des trésors et non des nouvelles lumières."—Histoire de France, par M. de Villaret, vol. xvi., p. 376.
No. IV.
The fable of Welsh Indians is of very old date. In the time of Sir Walter Raleigh, a confused report was spread over England that on the coast of Virginia the Welsh salutation had been heard; has, honi, iach. Owen Chapelain relates that in 1669, by pronouncing some Celtic words, he saved himself from the hands of the Indians of Tuscarora, by whom he was on the point of being scalped. The same thing, it is pretended, happened to Benjamin Beatty, in going from Virginia to Carolina. This Beatty asserts that he found a whole Welsh tribe, who preserved the tradition of the voyage of Madoc ap Owen, which took place in 1170. John Filson, in his "History of Kentucky," has revived these tales of the first travelers. 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. Captain Isaac Stewart asserts that on the Red River of Natchitoches, at the distance of 700 miles above its mouth, in the Mississippi, he discovered Indians with a fair skin and red hair, who conversed 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 wrapped up in otter skins, and on which great characters were written in blue, which neither Stewart, nor his fellow-traveler, Davey, a native of Wales, could decipher." 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 Brydones and the Chadogians. "They speak Welsh with greater purity than it is spoken in the principality of Wales(!), since it is exempt from Anglicisms; they profess Christianity, strongly mixed with Druidism." We can not read such assertions without recollecting that all those fabulous stories which flatter the imagination are renewed periodically under new forms. The learned and judicious geographer of the United States, Mr. Warden, inquires justly, why all the traces of Welsh colonies and the Celtic tongue have disappeared, since less credulous travelers, and who, in some sort, control one another, have visited the country situated between the Ohio and the Rocky Mountains. Mackenzie, Barton, Clarke, Lewis, Pike, Drake, Mitchill, and the editors of the "New Archæologia Americana," have found nothing, absolutely nothing, which denotes the remains of European colonies of the 12th century.—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. vi., p. 326. See Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 1; Powell's History of Wales, p. 196, &c.
Lord Lyttleton, in his notes to the 5th book of his "History of Henry II.," p. 371, has invalidated the story of Madoc's discoveries by arguments of great weight; and Mr. Pennant, in "Philosophical Transactions," vol. lviii., p. 91, has overthrown many of the arguments upon which the existence of a Welsh settlement among the Indians was founded. General Bowles, the Cherokee, was questioned when in England as to the locality of the supposed descendants of Madoc: he laid his finger on one of the branches of the Missouri. Pike's "Travels" had lessened the probability of finding such a tribe; and Lewis and Clarke's "Travels to the Source of the Missouri" have entirely destroyed it, as acknowledged by Mr. Southey in his "Madoc."—See note to the Preface of Madoc.
"It is much to be wished, that in our days, when a healthy tone of criticism is very much in use, without assuming a scornful character, the ancient inquiries of Powell ('Powell's History of Wales,' p. 196) and Richard Hakluyt ('Voyages and Navigations,' vol. iii., p. 4) might again be taken up in England. I do not participate in the notion of rejecting inquiries, by which the traditions of nations are frequently observed; I prefer much to hold the firm conviction that, with more diligence and perseverance, many of the historical problems which have hitherto remained unknown to us will one day be cleared up by actual discoveries."—Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 456.
By some antiquarians traces have been supposed to have been found of the discovery of America by the Irish before the year 1000. The Esquimaux related to the Normans who were settled in Winland, that further southward, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay, there dwelt "white men, who walked about in long white clothes, before them sticks to which white cloths were attached, and crying with a loud voice." This account was interpreted by the Christian Normans to signify processions, in which they carried flags and sang hymns. In the oldest traditions, and in the historical narrative of Thorfinn Karlsefue, and the Iceland Landnama Book, these southern coasts, between Virginia and Florida, are indicated by the name of "Whiteman's Land." They were, in the country itself, certainly called "Great Ireland" (Irland it Mikla), and it was supposed that they were peopled by the Irish. According to testimony extending as far back as the year 1064, before Leif discovered Winland, Ari Marsson, of the powerful Iceland race of Ulf, on a voyage southward from Iceland, was driven by a storm upon the coasts of "Great Ireland," and there baptized as a Christian, and not being allowed to go away, was subsequently recognized there by people from the Orkneys and Iceland. It is the present opinion of some northern antiquarians that Iceland was not peopled immediately from Europe, but from Virginia and Carolina (that is, from Great Ireland), by the Irish, who had early migrated to America.... The assiduous attempt to diffuse religious doctrines paved the way, at one time, for warlike undertakings, at another for the spread of peaceful ideas and commercial intercourse. The zeal which is so peculiar to the religions systems of India, Palestine, and Arabia, and which is altogether free from the indifference of Grecian and Roman polytheism, kept alive the study of geography in the first half of the Middle Ages. Letronne, the commentator of the Irish monk Dicuil, has proved, in an acute way, that after the Irish missionaries were driven out of the Färöe Islands by the Normans, they began to visit Iceland about the year 795. The Normans, when they came to Iceland, found there Irish books, bells for ringing for mass, and other objects, which former strangers, who were called Papar, had left behind. These Papæ (fathers) were the Clerici of Dicuil. Now if, as we must suppose from his testimony, those objects belonged to the Irish monks, who came from the Färöe Islands, the question is, why are the monks (Papar) called in their native traditions "Westmen"—men who have come from the west over the sea? Respecting the connection of Prince Madoc's voyage to a great western country in 1170, with the "Great Ireland" of the Iceland traditions, all accounts are enveloped in deep obscurity. Compare the inquiries in Rafn Antiq. Amer., p. 203, 206, 446, 451; and Wilhelmi upon Iceland, Hvitramannaland, the Land of White Men, p. 75, 81; Letronne, Récherches Géog. et Crit. sur le Livre de Mensurâ Orbis Terræ, composé en Irelande par Dicuil, 1814, p. 129, 146.