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the evidence on the other side, especially as they were best acquainted with the Streight of Magellan, and the neighbouring country. Such navigators as have visited this country, and are silent with respect to the stature of the inhabitants, particularly Sir Francis Drake, must be considered as witnesses against the fact in question; for their silence is a proof that they saw nothing extraordinary. It must however be observed, in the first place, that the greater part of those who hold the affirmative in this question, speak of people that inhabited the desert coast of Patagonia to the east and west; and that, on the contrary, those who hold the negative, speak of those who inhabit the Streight upon the sides of the utmost point of America to the north and south. The nations of these two districts are certainly not the same; and if the first have sometimes been seen in the Streight, it cannot be thought strange, considering how short the distance is from Port Saint Julian, which appears to be their ordinary habitation. Magellan, and his people saw them there very often, and trafficked with them sometimes on board his ships, and sometimes on shore: nor was this all, he seized two of them, and kept them prisoners in his vessel, one of whom was baptized some time before his death, and taught several words of his language to Pigafette, who formed them into a little dictionary: these are facts than which nothing can be more positive, or less subject to illusion.
"I affirm, says Knivet, that when I was at Port Desire I measured several dead bodies that I found buried there, which were from fourteen to sixteen spans high, and saw tracks in the sand which must have been left by people of nearly the same stature. I have also frequently seen at Brazil, one of the Patagonians who had been taken at Port Saint
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page xii, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/012.html