GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
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Julian, and though he was but a youth, he measured no less than thirteen spans: and our English prisoners at Brazil have assured me that they had seen many men of the same stature upon the coasts of the streight." Sebald de Wert says, that when he was in the Streight, he saw giants of the same bulk, who tore up trees by the roots, that were a span in diameter, with great facility; he also saw women that were gigantic, and others of the common stature. Oliver de Noort reports, that he saw savages of a gigantic stature at Port Desire, but does not call them giants: that he took six of them prisoners, and carried them on board his ship, one of whom afterwards told him that the country was inhabited by many different nations, four of which were of the ordinary stature; but that farther within the land, in a territory called Coin, there was a gigantic people, distinguished by the name of Tiremenen, who were continually making war upon the other nations. Spilberg relates, that he saw a man of an extraordinary stature upon the coast of Terra del Fuego, but that the sepulchres which he found, had received men of the common height. Aris-Clasz, who was on board La Maire’s fleet in the character of Commissary, a man well worthy of credit, declares, that having visited the sepulchres which he discovered upon the coast of Patagonia, be found the bones of men who were between ten and eleven feet high, which convinced him that the reports of former navigators were true; and here it must be confessed that the examination was made in cold blood, when it cannot be pretended that the object was magnified by fear. Some others, particularly Nodal and Sir Richard Hawkins, content themselves with saying that these savages were a head taller than the inhabitants of Europe, and of such a stature that the people on board their vessels called them giants. Such is the evidence of past times; we shall now consider that of the age
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page xiii, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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