n Powel." This passage implies a severe Reflection on Dr.
Powel. His Evidence is of no weight; it is not worthy of belief;
and, indeed, Sir Meredith ab Rhys, is no better. However I must
beg leave to differ very much, _indeed_, from the Doctor on this
Head, though I much admire him as a Writer and Historian; because
I think their Evidence is not only equal, but much superior to
his, concerning an Event which took place between two and three
hundred Years nearer to their Times than to his.

I should be very sorry to suspect that Dr. Robertson took notice
of Sir Meredyth ab Rhys, only because he could not well avoid it.
However, as if he wanted to destroy his Authority, he speaks of
him with great Indifference, with a formal, _indeed_.

He adds, "But if we admit Powel's Story; (Humphry Llwyd's) it does
not follow that the unknown Country which Madog discovered was any
part of America: it is much more probable that it was Madeira,
or some of the Western Isles." With submission, this is altogether
improbable. It is very little farther from North Wales to some
parts of America, than to the Madeiras; and, upon the whole, it is
more secure to sail in an open Sea, than among Shelves and Shoals
on an unknown Coast.

But not to insist upon this Circumstance; if the Country Madog
discovered was Madeira, or any of the Western Islands, he must
have found them uninhabited, and entirely uncultivated, covered
with Wood, and without any Traces of Human Beings; for as the Doctor
himself says, this was the state of the Madeiras when discovered
by the Portuguese in 1519. The other Western Isles were not, even,
settled, for some Centuries after Madog's Voyages.[uu]

[Footnote uu: Dr. Robertson. ubi supra. Vol. I. p. 64. If the Country
on which Madog landed was uninhabited, how could he have found the
Customs and Manners of the People different from those of Europe?
Where there were no Inhabitants, there could be no Customs.]

What the Doctor hath said, after Lord Lyttelton, concerning the
Literature and Naval skill of the ancient Britons, hath been already
animadverted upon. To add more on those particulars, is unnecessary.

If we could find no Word, among the Americans, similar to the ancient
British, in sound and sense, but Pengwyn, I should no more depend
upon that circumstance than Mr. Pennant doth; but that is not the
case: for many such words were found among the Natives of the New
World, and in the West Indian Islands, which a