GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Index
Search
Contact us
and which were shewn at Mexico and other places in the year 1550, are probably the bones of some animal unknown; and indeed nothing less than the sight of such a race of human beings, or of an entire skeleton, can be admitted as a proof of their existence. Turner, the naturalist, reports, that in the year 1610, the thigh bone of a man was shewn in London, who must have been of an enormous size; but this testimony is not decisive, though the author adds, that he had himself seen near the river Plata, upon the coast of Brasil, a race of giants who went stark naked; that the hinder part of their heads was flat, and not round; that the women had long black hair, as coarse as a horse’s mane; that the men were excellent archers, and, besides their bow and arrows, carried two massive balls or bullets, each fastened to one end of a thong, a weapon which they used with great dexterity and force, either by striking with it, or throwing it like a stone from a sling. One of these giants, he says, was twelve feet high; but acknowledges that he saw no other so tall.
"Of this fact there are other ocular witnesses who perhaps may be thought more worthy of credit; among the Spaniards, Magellan, Loaisa, Sarmiento, and Nodal; among the English, Cavendish, Hawkins, and Knivet; among the Dutch, Sebald, de Noort, le Maire, and Spilberg; and among the French, those who went in the expedition from Marseilles, and Saint Maloes. Those who bear testimony to the contrary, are Winter, the Dutch Admiral Hermite, Froger in de Gennes’s narrative, and Sir John Narborough. Winter, after having himself seen the inhabitants of Patagonia, says in direct terms, that the accounts of their being giants are falsehoods invented by the Spaniards; and it must be confessed that the testimony of these navigators at least counterbalances
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page xi, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/011.html