If you want to read a full transcription of the adventures of "THE JOURNEYS OF JAMES NEEDHAM AND GABRIEL ARTHUR IN 1673 AND 1674 THROUGH THE PIEDMONT AND MOUNTAINS OF NORTH CAROLINA TO ESTABLISH TRADE WITH THE CHEROKEE" go to: http://rla.unc.edu/Archives/accounts/Needham/Needham.html This is very interesting reading, BTW, though quite long. But there's not a word in this letter that states the strange "white" people they found were Christian, and I could not find anything to support the assertion that they spoke "Elizabethan English" (or any other language that a European might understand). There are some words about Spaniards, and a black people and village, but I cannot be fully sure of the context to confidently repeat what I think it said. If you want to try the authentic version use the "original letter" link. With regard to these people being Welch, I say posh! The Welch of 1100 were the original Britons -- dark haired, dark eyes, etc. And no Welshman who left the Islands in that time frame knew how to speak English -- I'm not even sure that the Angles ("English") could speak it at that time. I think that a careful read of the letter will also reveal that the two Englishmen who went on that exploration did not live to tell what they saw, and that Abraham Woods was only repeating what the Indians had told him. There's an intriguing mystery in all this to be sure, but I think the few facts that have come down to us have been distorted in the re-telling. Lou