This it was which induced the Celtic saints to hasten, as death approached, to some isle that commanded an unbroken view of the sea to the sunset; they could die in peace looking over the waste of waters to the land of delight whither angels would transport their souls. That was the true Avallon to which the mysterious barge conveyed King Arthur-- “Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea, Where I shall heal me of my grievous wound.” It was in quest of this land that Brendan, the Navigator, set forth on his seven years’ voyage; and Madog, the Welshman, sailed in quest of it, when life at home became too troubled for his peace-loving spirit. Dafydd ab Owen Gwynedd had obtained the throne in 1171 by killing his brother Hywel, but fearing every kinsman lest he should become a rival, he set himself to pick quarrels with his surviving brothers and cousins on one plea or other, and to crush or expel them. Madog is described by the poet Llywarch ab Llewelyn as “the placid one.” He was a brother of the ambitious and unscrupulous Dafydd. He embarked with a picked crew of faithful followers in Cardigan Bay, and in the year 1170 started on an exploring excursion to the far west, far beyond Ireland, “in trouble great and immeasurable.” Dafydd was alarmed; he feared that his brother had gone to obtain assistance in Ireland, and knowing that the bard, Llywarch, was his intimate friend, he tortured him with hot irons to wring from him the secret as to whither and for what purpose Madog had departed. Llywarch composed a poem whilst undergoing the ordeal, which is extant. It was said that after a year Madog returned, and gathered to him other followers, to the number of three hundred men in ten ships, and again departed in 1172 for the wondrous land beneath the sunset, from which he never returned. Consequently he has been esteemed a forerunner of Columbus. But nothing is certainly known about him more than that he sailed away to the west. Southey’s delightful epic _Madoc_ is based on this story. The expeditions of Madog are spoken of by three contemporary poets, and also by Meredydd ab Rhys, in a poem written before Columbus was heard of. In 1790 a young Welshman, John Evans, a native of Carnarvonshire, fired with these allusions and traditions of the extensive discoveries of Madog, made an expedition to America in the hopes of discovering traces there of the colony from Wales settled in the twelfth century. He ascended the Missouri for some 1,300 miles, but without success, and returned to S. Louis on the Mississippi to organise another expedition. However, he was prostrated by a fever, and died without accomplishing his object in 1797.