96 SIZE OF THE PATAGONIANS. May 1827. 
In the evening my son landed, when the same Indian came 
down to meet him, appeared delighted to see him, and pre- 
sented him with a bunch of feathers, of the same size as those 
which he had distributed in the morning. At this, our second 
visit, there were about fifty Patagonian men assembled, not 
one of whom looked more than fifty-five years of age. They 
were generally between five feet ten and six feet in height : 
one man only exceeded six feet—whose dimensions, measured 
by Captain Stokes, were as follows :— 
ft. in. 
Height -.....s-ee.----- 6 12 
Round the chest....e.e0-. 4 1% 
Do. loins ...-.. geass (do 42 
I had before remarked the disproportionate largeness of 
head, and length of body of these people, as compared with the 
diminutive size of their extremities ; and, on this visit, my 
opinion was further confirmed, for such appeared to be the 
general character of the whole tribe ; and to this, perhaps, may 
be attributed the mistakes of some former navigators. Magal- 
haens, or rather Pigafetta, was the first who described the 
inhabitants of the southern extremity of America as giants. 
He met some at Port San Julian, of whom one is described 
to be “ so tall, that our heads scarcely came up to his waist, 
and his voice was like that of a bull.” Herrera,* however, 
gives a less extravagant account of them: he says, “ the least 
of the men was larger and taller than the stoutest man of 
Castile ;” and Maxim. Transylvanus says they were “in height 
ten palms or spans; or seven feet six inches.” 
In Loyasa’s voyage (1526), Herrera mentions an interview 
with the natives, who came in two canoes, ‘ the sides of which 
were formed of the ribs of whales.” The people in them were 
of large size “ some called them giants ; but there is so little 
conformity between the accounts given concerning them, that 
I shall be silent on the subject.”+ 
As Loyasa’s voyage was undertaken immediately after the 
return of Magalhaens’ expedition, it is probable that, from the 
* Burney, i. p. 33. + Ibid, p. 135. 
