THIS year marks the 150th anniversary of the first landing of a group of Welsh emigrants in Patagonia.

On the day that the Mimosa landed them, Dafydd Williams, a tailor from Aberystwyth, wandered off to explore and never returned.

Some of the local native people discovered his bones and, apparently, his tailor's scissors, about four years later.

The land was dry and barren at the landing place, not at all what they had been led to expect.

I must report that into dryness, dust and death

With curiosity departed Dafydd Williams.

Not caring to imagine his lost hours

Last breath and parched despairing body

Graveless, painted on a still and sun-cracked canvas

His faltering path to heaven lit

By stars he did not know

His dust by alien winds far scattered

Gather in his soul, Lord God, but

How I wish his fatal pilgrimage

Had not occurred.

Oh Lord, let us now be delivered

From this cracked mud and overwhelming sky

These rocks, thy handiwork, protect by poorly

This place where we your faithful servants lie.

Yet we shall not permit despair

In all his ways and doings doth he cleave

Unto his purpose, although in ours perhaps we fail.

All lands are his, not least this desolation,

And though our understanding, never great,

Again betrays us, it is so.

Huw Pritchard says, "he is a clever man, O Lord

"With his God-give tongue"

It is an orphan of geography

And we were much amused

Although for my part I do not fully understand.

A Robinson

Penarth