104 



APPENMX. 



opportunity of measuring one of their footsteps, which was eighteen 

 inches long : he also found their graves, and mentions their customs 

 of burying near the shore.* In 1591, Anthony Knevet, who sailed 

 with Sir Thomas Cavendish in his second voyage, relates that he 

 saw, at Port Desire, men fifteen or sixteen spans high, and that he 

 measured the bodies of two that had been recently buried, which 

 were fourteen spans long.f In 1599, Sebald de Veert, who sailed 

 with Admiral de Cordes, was attacked in the Strait of Magellan by 

 savages whom he thought to be ten or eleven feet high.. He adds,, 

 that they were of reddish colour, and had long hair 4 



In the same year, Oliver Van Noort, a Dutch admiral, had a ren- 

 contre with this gigantic race, whom he represents to be of a high 

 stature, and of a terrible aspect. 



1614. — George Spilbergen, another Dutchman, in his passage 

 through the same Strait, saw a man, of a gigantic stature, climb- 

 ing a hill as if to take a view of the ship.§ 1615. — Le Maire and 

 Schouten discovered some of the burying-places of the Patagonians 

 beneath heaps of great stones, and found in them skeletons ten or 

 eleven feet long. || 



Mr. Falkner supposes that formerly there existed a race of Pata- 

 gonians superior to these in size ; for skeletons are often found of 

 far greater dimensions, particularly about the river Texeira. Per- 

 haps he may have heard of the old tradition of the natives mentioned 

 by Cieza,^ and repeated from him by Garcilasso de la Vega,** of 

 certain giants having come by sea, and landed near the cape of St. 

 Helena, many ages before the arrival of the Europeans. 



1618.: — Gracias de Nodal, a Spanish commander, in the course of 

 his voyage, was informed by John Moore, one of his crew, who 

 landed between Cape St. Esprit and Cape St. Arenas, on the south 

 side of the Straits,, that he trafficked with a race of men taller, by 

 the head, than the Europeans. This and the next are the only 

 instances I ever met with of the tall race being found on that side of 

 the Strait. 



♦ Purchas, i. 58. t Purchas, i. 1232. 



X Col. Voy. by the Dutch East- India Company, &g. London, 170.?, 

 p. 319. 



§ Purchas, i, 80. || Purchas, i. 91. 



^ Seventeen years travels of Peter de Cieza, 138. 

 ** Translated by Ricaut, p. 263. 



