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
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