108 APPF-Nrnx.
that there are more ^^•ay3 than one of coming at a thing—that the
commerce between Sheffield and South America, through the port
of Cadiz, is most uncommonly large—and that his Indians might
have got their knives from the Spaniards, at the same time that
they got tlieir gilt nails and Spanish harness. But for farther
satisfaction on this subject, I have liberty to say. from Mr. Byron's
authority, that he never gave a single knife to the people he s awthat
he had not one at that time about him—that, exceptmg the
presents given -n-ith his o^-n hands, and the tobacco brought by
Lieutenant Cummins, not the least trifle was bestowed. I am furnished
with one other proof that these lesser Indians, whom Mr.
Wallis saw. were not the same as those described by Mr. Byron, as
has been insinuated ; for the first had with him some officers who
had been vnth him on the preceding voyage, and who bear witness
not only to the difference of size, but declare that these people had
not a single article among them given by Mr. Byron. It is
extremely probable that these were the Indians that Mr. Bougamville
fell m with; for they were furnished with bits, a Spanish
scymeter, and brass stirrups, as before-mentioned.
My last evidence of these gigantic Americans is that which I
received from Mr. Falkner: he acquainted me that, about the year
1742 he was sent on a mission to the vast plains of Pampas, which,
if I recoUect right. He to the south-west of Buenos Ayres, and
extend near a thousand mUes towards the Andes. In these plains
he first met with some tribes of these people, and was taken under
the protection of one of the caciques. The remarks he made on
their size were as foUows : - t h a t the taUest, which he measured
in the same manner that Mr. Byron cUd. was seven feet eight mches
Jiigh—that the common height, or middle size, was SDC feet—that
there were numbers that were even shorter—and that the tallest
woman did not exceed six feet; that they were scattered from the
foot of the Andes over tliat vast tract which extends to the Atlantic
Ocean and are found as far as the Red River, at Bay Anegada,
lat 40° 1' • below that the land is too barren to be habitable, and
none are found, except accidental migrants, till you arrive at the
river Gallego. near the Straits of MageUan.
" M. Frezier was assured by Don Pedro MoHno. Governor of
» See Mr. Byron's letter at the end.
AITENDIX. 109
Chiloe, that he once was visited by some of these people, who were
four varas, or about nine or ten feet high; they came in company
with some Chiloe Indians,* with whom they were friends, and who
probably found them in some of their excursions."
" Those whose height is so extraordinaiy as to occasion a great
disbelief of the accounts of voyagers, are indisputably an existent
people; they have been seen by Magellan, and six others, in the
sixteenth century, and by two, if not three, in the present."
THOMAS PENNANT,
Copy of a Paper transmitted from Admiral Byron to Mr. Pennant,
through the hands of the Right Reverend John Egerton, late
Bishop of Durham, after he had perused the manuscript of the
foregoing account.
" The people I saw upon the coast of Patagonia were not the
same that were seen the second voyage. One or two of the officers
that sailed with me, and afterwards m t h Captain Wallis, declared to
me that they had not a single thing I had distributed amongst
those I saw.
" M. Bougainville remarks, that his officers landed amongst the
Indians I had seen, as they had many English knives among them,
which were, as he pretends, undoubtedly given by me. Now it
happened that I never gave a single knife to any of those Indians,
nor did I even carry one ashore with me.
" I had often heard from the Spaniards that there were two or
three difl'erent nations of very tall people, the largest of which inhabit
those immense plains at the back of the Andes : the others,
somewhere near the river Gallegos. I take it to be the former that
I saw. and for this reason:—^returning from Port Famine, where I
had been to wood and water, I saw those people's fires a long way to
the westward of where I had left them, and a great way inland, so,
as the winter was approaching, they were certainly returning to a
better cUmate. I remarked that they had not one single thing
amongst them that shewed they ever had any commerce with Europeans.
They were certainly of a most amazing size : so much were
• Frezier's Voyage, p. 86. lii
M ' 1