in speaking of the Spaniards with whom he
went to the Straits of Magellan, says that his
countrymen's crowns reached only to the
hips of the people living by the Bay of Saint
Julian. Leonard de Argensola, writing of
the capture of the Moluccas, says that
Magellan took away from the straits named
after him, men ten or eleven feet high, who
died upon the voyage for want of their
accustomed food. Another writer says, that a
Dutch boat's crew once fought in this part of
the world with giants, who pulled up whole
trees for use as shields against the bullets.
Of the Patagonians, whom the Spaniards
named because of their stature, from the
word for a large measure (Patagon meaning
in Spanish a great foot), it is enough to say,
that everyone now knows them to be no
giants, though undoubtedly a tall race of
men, generally five feet ten inches, or six
feet high, and exceeding six feet oftener than
Europeans do. Some of them are occasionally
to be seen who have attained the height of
six feet five inches, or six feet seven inches.

Americus Vesputius is answerable for
another tale of giants, found upon an island
not far from the mainland of America. Nine
Spaniards went into its interior, having
already observed gigantic footsteps, and found
in a valley five huge huts, in which were two
huge women and three daughters, by whom
food was set before the strangers. Presently
there arrived six-and-thirty men, of greater
stature than the women, who stood at a
distance, making no attack, but presently
followed the Europeans to their boat, and
swam after them, shooting at them with bows
and arrows while they swam. They were
put to flight by a discharge or two of cannon.
Another story of this sort reported that there
was a cannibal race of perfectly white giants,
the Guaimures, in Brazil, carrying huge
bows and arrows. The Guaimures were
never known to fight in bands, but always
made their attack singly, preying like the tiger
upon any victim they could seize. These
beings, it was said, ate their own children.

So much for giant races. Single giants
that have been discovered here and there
one may believe in, when the story of them
is content to preserve reasonable bounds.
Strabo tells of the skeleton of a giant sixty
cubits— ninety or more feet— long, that was
found near the city of Tangier. It was said
to be the skeleton of Antæus, an old king of
Mauritania. Pliny tells how, on the island
of Crete, a mountain was split by an earthquake,
and there was disclosed, standing erect
in the midst of it, the body of a giant seventy
feet high, who was supposed by some to be
Orion.

At Trapani, in Sicily, there was, if we
believe the record, found in a cavern the skeleton
of a man three hundred feet high. It
was in a sitting posture, and leant with the
left hand upon a stalf taller than any fir-tree.
When the discovery was made, the inhabitants
of the district fled, but afterwards there
were collected three hundred armed men,
who ventured near. That was the skeleton
of Polyphemus.

In the year fourteen hundred and one, says
Boccaccio, there was discovered near Rome
the grave of Pallantes, the companion of
Æneas. The body was still whole and sound,
as though but newly buried. It was taller
than the walls of Rome. There was a great
wound in the breast, and near the head there
burnt a lamp, which nothing could extinguish.

Charlemagne, if we believe the record, had
in his army a great Swiss named Aenother,
who forded rivers that were unbridged, whatever
their depth, and mowed down men like
grass. The men slain by him in fight he
strung upon his spear like larks, and carried
swung over his shoulder.

Melchior Nuñez says, that in his time the
Chinese gate-keepers of Pekin were all of
them fifteen feet high, and that the Emperor
of China had five hundred such men for his
gate-keepers and body-guard. There is a
proverb about knowing Hercules by his foot:
after the battle of Mühlberg, when Charles
the Fifth had taken prisoner John Frederic,
the Electoral Prince of Saxony, the Spanish
ambassador cunningly displayed to the court
of France the magnitude of the triumph, not,
indeed, by exhibiting John Frederic's foot,
but his boot. A vast boot, into which a man
could almost get, was shown at the court of
France, and said to have been pulled off the
leg of the elector.

And now that we have named so many
great men, we can see no reason why we
should produce more as rivals to their greatness.
There are here surely enough of them
to stand alone, if they can stand at all.
Kircher, the jesuit, declared it hardly possible
that any very great giant could stand. Men,
if they were much taller than six feet, would,
he said, surely fall to the ground; for you
see how it is with the colossal statues in
Rome, that would fall to pieces if there were
not props placed here and there under
projecting limbs. He seems to have felt that
a man only nine feet high would require
skewering together.

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