ately on those who fulminate feebly their protests and claims. And if in Mr. Williams the last of the elder line of the ancient Bourbon race expired, it adds but one more to the already long list of lost princes who have died in obscurity and poverty.

After the lapse of so many years since his death, circumstances recently threw into our hands his papers, which had lain in the meantime in the house in Hogansburgh where he died. And while they may not do much to confirm his royal claims, they cast many side lights upon a history which is strange and interesting. The papers filled six or eight cases, and had been kept with admirable care; and besides including a journal of a larger part of his life, and copies of all his letters apparently, furnished such copious memoranda as would enable one to gain a clear view of his interior life and opinions.

The disputed period of his life is that previous to his fifteenth year, when, in the year 1800, he, with his reputed brother, was brought from Canada to Massachusetts to be educated. The usual version of his history is that he was the son of Thomas Williams, who was the grandson of Eunice Williams, the "Fair Captive," who, with her father, the Rev. John Williams, was carried prisoner to Canada at the capture of Deerfield in 1704, and who married an Indian, and spent the rest of her life in Canada. Mr. Hanson, in his work, "The Lost Prince," has elaborated to a larger extent than it would be interesting to follow him the probabilities of Mr. Williams' identity with the Dauphin, Louis Charles, the son of Louis XVI., who had been supposed to have died in the Temple in 1795.

While there have ever been doubts hanging about the question as to whether the child that died in the Temple was indeed the Dauphin, or whether the Dauphin was conveyed away, and a moribund child put in his place; the records of the Temple have such an apparent completeness and force as to establish as firmly as any ordinary matter of history is established,

the likelihood that the Dauphin died in 1795. Still there are facts, as, for instance, the issue of police orders for the watching of the frontiers immediately after the reported death of the Dauphin, for the stopping of suspected persons, and the actual arrest of one person thought to be the Prince; the absence of the Dauphin's name in the funeral solemnities of the Royal Family at the Restoration; and the evident unwillingness of the government to accord an investigation, although desired, into the claims of the pretender Naundorff; all of which cast an uncertainty over the matter, and seem to invite the inquiry whether the Dauphin really did die in 1795, and then, whether Mr. Williams might not have been the Dauphin. There is enough doubt to give zest to the investigation. An article in the Philadelphia Aurora, of October 29, 1811, states that a curious rumor was afloat in England, that the Dauphin was alive, and that a person had lately arrived in that country who knew where he resided, and had communicated the same to the government. The former servant of the Duchess d'Angoulême in 1853, in New Orleans, testified also that her mistress at about the same time believed her brother to be alive.

Now, supposing that the Dauphin was rescued from the Temple in 1795, is there any evidence that Mr. Williams and the Dauphin were the same person? If the claim was false, Mr. Williams was a half-breed Indian; and the deception, which was so clever as to enlist the earnest support of many good scholars, and proficients in the knowledge of human nature, was doubly remarkable, in view of the antecedents of its origi

nator.

The fact of the European type of countenance which Mr. Williams had, does not conclude the matter; because, if he was the son of Thomas Williams, he would have had a large proportion of white blood in his veins. His great grandmother Eunice married an Indian; but her daughter married an Englishman; and it was that daughter's son who was the father of Eleazar. It was

entirely possible, therefore, on any theory, that he should have had Caucasian features. And yet he undoubtedly did resemble in many of his features the Bourbon family. Not to mention the strong testimony of Dr. Francis and the artist Fagnani, there is a letter among his papers from Mr. Thos. H. White, of Philadelphia, from which the following is an extract:

There is residing in Burlington, New Jersey, a member of the society of Friends, Stephen Grelet; he was formerly an officer in the French service; has seen Louis XVI. On being shown your likeness, without being told who it was taken for, and asked merely if it resembled any one whom he knew, he replied, "I see no likeness in it to any one but Louis XVI."

And the coincidence of the fact, and the position of the cicatrized and scrofulous scars on the body of the Dauphin and of Mr. Williams, is a remarkable circumstance.

Two tests of the genuineness of his claims occurred to every one, when he put forth his pretensions: the testimony of his mother, and the evidence of his own memory. His mother, of course, would know whether Eleazar was her son or not. But she was an Indian, and did not understand English, and so could only be approached through an interpreter. Mr. Williams said that, as she was a Roman Catholic and he a Protestant, the priests had induced her, from consideration for the Church's

interests, to be silent on the subject, that she would give no answer whatever to questions concerning Eleazar. Somewhat later, however, in the midst of the discussions concerning his claims, an affidavit appeared signed by his mother declaring positively that Eleazar was her son, and that the scars on his knees came from sores which he brought home with him from school. Still later another affidavit of Mrs. Williams appeared, contradicting much of the former affidavit, and in which Eleazar is mentioned indirectly as her adopted son. In giving this affidavit Mr. Hanson makes no mention of Mr. Williams' connection with it, but says that it was uttered freely by Mrs. Wil

liams in Mohawk, and afterward translated into English. What surprised us, therefore, in looking over the papers was to find several memoranda in Mr. Williams' handwriting in English, which showed that the affidavit had really been composed by him. There were rough copies containing erasures and interlineations, showing how the affidavit had been made up, and all indicating an apparent purpose to steal the desired avowal of his adoption from his mother, without making too broad an issue. In order, therefore, to get at the truth of the matter, we wrote to the Justice before whom both of the affidavits were sworn, and desired him to relate the circumstances, as he remembered them. His answer was as follows:

The first affadavit was made under the fol

lowing circumstances. Rev. Mr. Marcoux of St. Regis came to my office at the time the affadavit is dated, and said that he had been requested by the editor of some French paper, published in New York, to ascertain from the mother of Mr. Williams whether there was any reason to suppose that Eleazar was not her son. Mrs. Williams accompanied Mr. Marcoux, and I think one or two other persons. Mr. Marcoux acted as interpreter. Mrs. Williams did not speak or understand English. The affadavit was drafted by me, and so far as I could judge by the little knowledge I have of the Indian language, she was truly and correctly.interpreted, and spoke in that affadavit as she wished to be understood. The second affadavit was taken at the hotel, Mr. Williams and interpreter, being present. I had no particuanother gentleman with Antoine Barrow, the lar knowledge of the matter until called in to take the affadavit, when I found the parties above named, with Mrs. Williams, in the room, and a discussion going on between Mr. Williams and Barrow about the meaning of an Indian word which was to make the mother

say that he was adopted. I took the affadavit made by Mrs. Williams, but I never thought that she intended to say that Eleazar was an adopted son, but she seemed very much surprised that he should claim to be any other than her own son. This was always her answer, except in this single instance. I have never believed she understood the word, or intended to say what she was made to say in the last affadavit. I think that you will find it rather artfully drawn, and that it does not present such an appearance of truth and frankness as the first. Certainly, if I am mistaken in this view, it was very forcibly impressed on

It seems, therefore, clear that Mrs. Williams desired to say that Eleazar was her son. She might or might not be uttering the truth; but such was her declaration. It therefore fares badly with Mr. Williams' credibility to find him writing to the Rev. Mr. Hale that "his mother was justly indignant at the statement" (that Eleazar was not the son of Louis XVI., but was her son), "and calls the utterer of it a dishonest villain and a liar, to invent such a false tale as coming from her."

It is, however, true that Eleazar's name does not appear among those of the other children of Thomas Williams on the baptismal register at Caughnawaga. This is certainly surprising, considering the carefulness of the Roman Catholics in the matter of the baptism of their children. The names of all the other children are there except Eleazar's. The, perhaps insufficient, reason for the omission, given by the mother and the priest, was that the child was weakly, and was baptized privately, and, in consequence, no record was kept. But the statement made by Mr. Williams to Mr. Hanson, that "the births of the children follow so closely upon each other in regular intervals of two years each,' that it does not seem naturally possible I could have been her child," is hardly borne out by the record. Mrs. Williams says that Eleazar was her fourth child; and the births follow, according to the baptismal register, at these intervals; 1780, 1781, 1786, 1791, 1793, 1795, 1796, 1799, &c.; so that, at the time named by Mrs. Williams, there is an unusual interval, in which, in order to preserve the regularity, it is possible, perhaps, likely, that a child was born. The baptismal register, on the evidence in which Mr. Williams so greatly depended, is not, therefore, conclusive in his favor.

When appealed to as regards his memory of his early life, Mr. Williams said that his life, up to within a short time before he went to Massachusetts in 1800, was to him a blank, that a few

A circumstance is told by Mr. Hanson, on anonymous authority, about Mr. Williams' education, which was one of those many slight, concurring incidents that rendered his plea for Mr. Williams so apparently conclusive; but which an examination of original documents proves to be false. He says that, while Eleazar and his reputed brother were together in Massachusetts being educated, and while the expenses for his brother's education were altogether a charge upon the benevolent, part of the means for Eleazar's support was furnished from an unknown source. Now we have before us the package of original bills and appropriations, and no such distinction is anywhere apparent. It is absolutely certain that Eleazar, like his brother, was educated wholly at the charge of certain benevolent societies in Massachusetts, with a view to future ministry among the Indians. There is not the slightest appearance of mystery. Mr. Hanson quotes the authority of an Albany newspaper for the statement that Mr. Bleecker of that city was the agent for Mr. Jourdan, and supplied Thomas Williams with money for the education of the foreign boy. But I have before me the copy of a communication, in Mr. Williams' handwriting, sent under a fictitious name to the Albany Knickerbocker, which is the origin of all the assertions which Mr. Hanson says came from an undoubted source. For all we can gather to the contrary they came from Mr. Williams' imagination, as no authority whatever is referred to.

After completing his education in Massachusetts, and after his participation as ranger in the second war, in which he was wounded, Mr. Williams, in 1816, commenced his work among the Indians at Oneida; and, five years

later, emigrated with a part of the tribe to Green Bay, Wisconsin, near which place he continued to reside until 1850, when he returned East.

As early as 1822 a disposition appeared in Mr. Williams, which continued to manifest itself ever afterwards, to engage in genealogical researches. In that year he writes to a relative that he is about to prepare a life of Solomon Williams, and desires documents. In 1845 he assisted in preparing a memoir of his great grandmother Eunice. In 1848 he preached in Deerfield two commemorative and historical discourses on the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the Rev. John Williams.

At this time, too, he began to collect accounts of Indian history, manners, and traditions. In 1823 numerous letters indicate that he had become known in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Hartford as an authority in Indian matters. Letters of inquiry from the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, Mrs. Sigourney, Mr. Cope, and others, were answered with such fulness as to indicate that he had already made fair progress in what he afterwards continued,- inquiries as to the labors of the early French missionaries among the Indians, and the travels and discoveries of La Salle, Hennepin and Marquette. And at a date no later than 1826 the following extract from the Hampshire Gazette is found in his journal, and may indicate the drift of his mind:

WELSH INDIANS.-The Welsh have a tradition that one of their princes, by the name of Madoc, sailed from Wales about the year 1170, with 300 men, and never returned; and some authors imagine that they settled in America, and report that a tribe of white Indians, who speak the Welsh language, now inhabit some part of the country west of the Mississippi. In December, 1822, a gentleman in Wales wrote a letter to Rev. E. Chapman, one of the Ameri

can missionaries stationed among the Osages, requesting information respecting a tribe of Indians inhabiting the Rocky Mountains, near Santa Fe, and furnished him with a small vocabulary of Welsh words, to ascertain whether these Indians had any knowledge of the Welsh language. Mr. Chapman, in his reply, states that he had been informed by a party of hunters that the Navajoes, a singular people, live in the midst of the mountains northwest of

Santa Fe; that they cultivate all kinds of vegetables; possess herds of cattle, horses, sheep, &c.; do not live in villages, but on their plantations; manufacture various articles of clothing; and dress unlike all other Indians. The men cultivate the earth and tend the flocks, and the women attend to domestic affairs. They have large churches, and their own native priest, and refuse to admit the Spanish clergy. Their weapons resemble those of the ancient Britons. Mr. C. had found no opportunity to compare their language with the Welsh.

There is very little probability, in our opinion, that these Indians will turn out to be the descendants of Madoc and his friends. There is no more reason to suppose that they have derived some of the arts of civilized life, and some knowledge of Christianity from their neighbors, the Spaniards.-Hampshire Gazette.

From the time of Mr. Williams' removal from New York began that course which was the bane of all his after life. He became mixed up in the temporal affairs of the Indians, and in a short time was but little else than a hanger on about the committee rooms and departments at Washington. This so secularized his character, and to this he so subordinated his clerical duties that, within two or three years after his removal West, his missionary stipend was withdrawn, and his connection with the society dissolved. For twentyfive years thereafter he seems to have rendered only occasional ministerial services, and his thoughts are wholly absorbed in the prosecution of Indian claims. It would be needless to enumerate all the schemes which kept him constantly in or near Washington, watching the varying fortunes of his petitions; but laments over the worldliness of his mind, and conjectures as to the success of his suits before Congress form, during this period the staple of his journal.

After being flattered with many delusive hopes, he met at length, on the whole, with the fate of all federal claimants. He secured some appropriations for the Indians, out of which considerable sums had to be deducted for his expenses. But he became poorer and poorer, until, in 1850, he had no foot left to stand upon in the West. He had been called to account for ministerial

irregularities by the Bishop of New York, and the Bishop of Wisconsin ; and the Boston missionary society, of which he had latterly become a stipendiary, received a complaint from the Indians that Mr. Williams never preached, and only wanted money. And the cause of it all, as he confesses in his journal, was his absorption in secular affairs. He had been drawn into the vortex at Washington, and, in waiting for his claims to be allowed, he lost his ministerial devotion, and all his property besides.

With a single exception, in either his letters, or journals, or papers, we see not the slightest mention of his royal claims until the year 1848. That exception is the single entry in one place in his journal in 1841 of his interview with Prince de Joinville, and the reported disclosure of his royal birth made to him then. Certain it is that there is no other allusion to this most stupendous revelation of his origin in any other form for seven years after it was said to have been made. And no person has been found to whom, during this interval, Mr. Williams spoke of the strange history. He explains this si He explains this silence by saying that he was incredulous as to its truth; and the matter dropped out of his mind, until afterwards revived by further circumstances.

Certainly, the difficulty of assigning a motive for such gratuitous disclosures to an obscure missionary on the part of the Prince, whose father was then in apparently secure possession of the throne of France, was always an inexplicable point in Mr. Williams' story. And it is no small task to harmonize Mr. Williams' refusal of such splendid offers as he says were then made to him with his extreme poverty at the time, and the toughening of scruple which must have been induced in him by so long contact with the influences at Washington. Moreover, the political sentiments put into the Prince's mouth during the interview, more especially the remarks relative to the connection between the French Revolution and the misfortunes of Louis XVI., and the aid

rendered by France to us during our own Revolutionary struggle, are found in almost identical words among Mr. Williams' papers at a date long anterior to his interview with the Prince.

It is, of course, unquestionable that the Prince heard of Mr. Williams in the East, and inquired for him. But, as we have seen, Mr. Williams had long been known in the Eastern cities as one versed in those subjects of early French history in this country in which the Prince would naturally be interested. And nothing would be more obvious than that he should have had Mr. Williams' name given to him, and that, when he went West, he should have inquired for Mr. Williams.

This is the Prince's version of the matter; and the likelihood of its truth is certified by the following circumstance. Immediately after parting from each other, at the Prince's suggestion, Mr. Williams prepared and sent to the Prince in New York some information about La Salle and Charlevoix. The reception of this information the Prince courteously acknowledges through his secretary; but there is not the slightest intimation of any occult matter between them. In 1843 Mr. Williams, in the name of his Indian brethren, sends a request to the King of the French, through the Prince, for some books of instruction. The Prince, through his secretary, replies that the King has complied with the request and sends the books. On account of interruptions in mail communications the letter and the box remain for a little time in New York; and, when they are forwarded, the Consul General of France in a note says that he "was unable before to present to Mr. Williams the enclosed letter and the box of books sent by the King of the French." On these words, in order to heighten Mr. Williams' importance, and as an additional voucher for his claims, the assertion is founded that the King thought Mr. Williams worthy of an autograph letter, which was lost. The letter referred to is, of course, that of the Prince's secretary. A copy of Mr. Williams' reply to this