ad before Columbus sailed on his first Western Voyage.
We are told, also, by credible Authors, that some plain traces of
Christianity, such as it was in the Days of Madog, were found in
America, when the Spaniards landed there. No Nation, in Europe,
hath ever pretended to have visited America before Behaim, Columbus,
or Americus Vespucius, but the Welsh: it is therefore almost, if
not quite certain, that if its religious Notions and Customs were
derived from Europe, it must have been from the Ancient Britons. The
Words in common use on different parts of the Continent, which are
very near, or undeniably Welsh, in both sound and sense, could not
happen by chance, and they could not be derived from any Europeans
but from the Ancient Britons.

The inhabitants of some parts, it is said had a Book among them,
upon which they set a great Value, though they could not read it.
This Book seems to have been a Welsh Bible, because it was found
in the Hands of a people who spoke Welsh; and because Mr. Jones
could read and understand it.

This Circumstance is of great Weight in the debate. For whether
this Book was a Welsh Bible or not, it actually proves that the
Natives of that Country where the Book was found, had been on that
Continent many Ages, and could not be the descendants of a Colony
planted there after the discovery of Columbus in 1492. No written
Language or Alphabetical Characters can be totally forgotten by
any people, within the space of 160, or 170 Years, which was the
period that intervened between the discovery of Columbus and Mr.
Jones's visit.

It will be shewn in this short Treatise that there is not the least
reason to think that the whole was a Story invented to be the ground
of a claim to a first Discovery. For before Columbus returned from
his first Western Voyage, no Nation in Europe had any idea of a
Western Continent except the Ancient Britons; among whom there
seems to have been some Tradition that Prince Madog, many Years
before the 15th Century, had landed on some western Shores; but
that these were the American Shores, was a Discovery of later Ages.

Mr. Owen Jones, and Mr. William Owen, the Editors of David ab Gwilym's
Poems, lately published, to whom I am obliged for several Observations,
have favored me with the following account of a very late date.

In a letter, dated Octob. 1st, 1788, a Friend of theirs, a Native
of Wales, who lives on the Banks of the Ohio, informed them that
he had bee