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ever beheld : round one eye was a large circle of white, a circle
of black surrounded the other, and the rest of his body was
streaked with paint of different colours. I did not measure
him ; but if I may judge of his height by the proportion of
his stature to my own, it could not be less than seven feet.
When this frightful colossus came up, we muttered somewhat
to each otlier as a salutation, &c.”* After this he mentions a
woman “ of most enormous size and again, when Mr. Cum-
ming, the lieutenant, joined him, the commodore says, “ Before
the 4 g was finished, Mr. Gumming came up with the tobacco,
and I could not but smile at the astonishment which I saw
expressed in his countenance upon perceiving himself, though
six feet two inches high, become at once a pigmy among giants,
for these people may, indeed, more properly be called giants
than tall men : of the few among us who are full six feet high,
scarcely any are broad and muscular, in proportion to their
stature, but look rather like men of the common bulk grown
up accidentally to an unusual height; and a man who should
measure only six feet two inches, and equally exceed a stout
weU-set man of the common stature in breadth and muscle,
would strike us rather as being of a gigantic race, than as an
' individual accidentally anomalous; our sensations, therefore,
upon seeing five hundred people, the shortest of whom were
at least four inches taller, and bulky in proportion, may be
easily imagined.”-)-
This account was published only seven years after the
voyage, and the exaggeration, if any, might have been exposed
by iiumhers. There can be no doubt, that among five hundred
persons several were of a large size; hut that all were four
inches taller than six feet must have been a mistake. The commodore
says, that he “ caused them all to he seated, and
in that position, from the length of their bodies, they would
certainly appear to be of very large stature.)
• Hawkswortli’s Coll. i 28. + Ibid.
{ See a letter from Mr. Charles Clarke, an officer on board the Dolphin,
to Mr. Maly, M.D., secretary o f the Royal Society, dated Nov. 3,
17G6, read before the Royal Society on 12th April 17C7, and published in
the
Shortly afterwards, Wallis, in the neighbourhood of Cape
Virgins, communicated witli the same people, and as the story
of the Patagonian giants had been spread abroad, and was
very much discredited, he carried two measuring rods with
him ; and says, in his narrative, “ We went round and measured
those that appeared to be the tallest. One was six feet
seven inches high, several more were six feet five, and six feet
six inches ; but the stature of the greatest part of them was
from five feet ten to six feet.”
In the voyage of the Santa Maria de la Cabeza,* 1786, it
is related that the height of one or two Patagonians, with
whom the officers had an interview, was six feet eleven inches
and a half (of Burgos), which is equal to six feet four inches
and a half (English). This man wore a sword, on which was
engraved “ Por el Bey Carlos I I I .,” and spoke a few words
in Spanish, proofs of his having had communication with some
of the Spanish settlements. It does not, however, appeal’ from
the account that there were many others, if any, of that
height.
Of all the above accounts, I think those by Bougainville and
Wallis the most accurate. It is true, that of the number we
saw, none measured more than six feet two inches ; but it is
possible that the preceding generation may have been a larger
race of people, for none that we saw could have been alive at
the time of Wallis’s or Byron’s voyage. The oldest certainly
were the tallest ; but, without discrediting the accounts of
Byron, or any other of the modern voyagers, I think it probable
that, by a different mode of hfe, or a mixture by
marriage with the southern or Fuegian tribes, which we know
has taken place, they have degenerated into a smaller race, and
have lost all right to the title of giants ; yet their bulky,
the fifty-seventh volume of the Phil. T rans., p a rt i. p. 75, in which an
exaggerated account is given of this meeting. The men are described to
be eight feet high, and the women seven and a h alf to e ight feet. “ Th ey
are prodigious stout, and as well and proportionably made as ever I saw
people in my life.” This communication was probably intended to corroborate
the commodore’s account.
* Ultimo Viage, p. 21. '