100 FORMER ACCOUNTS OF PATAGONIANS. 
ever beheld: round one eye was a large circle of white, a circle 
of black surrounded the other, and the rest of his body was 
streaked with paint of different colours. I did not measure 
him; but if I may judge of his height by the proportion of 
his stature to my own, it could not be less than seven feet. 
When this frightful colossus came up, we muttered somewhat 
to each other as a salutation, &c.”* After this he mentions a 
woman * of most enormous size ;” and again, when Mr. Cum- 
ming, the lieutenant, joined him, the commodore says, “ Before 
the song was finished, Mr. Cumming came up with the tobacco, 
and I could not but smile at the astonishment which I saw 
expressed in his countenance upon perceiving himself, though 
six feet two inches high, become at once a pigmy among giants, 
for these people may, indeed, more properly be called giants 
than tall men: of the few among us who are full six feet high, 
scarcely any are broad and muscular, in proportion to their 
stature, but look rather like men of the common bulk grown 
up accidentally to an unusual height; and a man who should 
measure only six feet two inches, and equally exceed a stout 
well-set man of the common stature in breadth and muscle, 
would strike us rather as being of a gigantic race, than as an 
individual accidentally anomalous; our sensations, therefore, 
upon seeing five hundred people, the shortest of whom were 
at least four inches taller, and bulky in proportion, may be 
easily imagined.”-+ 
This account was published only seven years after the 
voyage, and the exaggeration, if any, might have been exposed 
by numbers. There can be no doubt, that among five hundred 
persons several were of a large size; but that all were four 
inches taller than six feet must have been a mistake. The com- 
modore says, that he “ caused them all to be seated,” and 
in that position, from the length of their bodies, they would 
certainly appear to be of very large stature.{ 
* Hawksworth’s Coll. i 28. + Ibid. 
} See a letter from Mr. Charles Clarke, an officer on board the Dol- 
phin, to Mr, Maly, M.D., secretary of the Royal Society, dated Nov. 3, 
1766, read before the Royal Society on 12th April 1767, and published in 
the 
