282 



PATAGONIANS. 



One navigator, a Dutchman, makes this 

 race out to be from ten to eleven feet high. 

 Others have met with men of ordinary 

 height on this coast, and appear to have 

 doubted altogether the previous accounts of 

 earlier discoverers. But it is quite possible 

 to deem these to have been sincere dis- 

 believers, without impugning the veracity of 

 Hawkins or Cavendish. The Laplanders are 

 said to be the dwarfs of the human race ; but a 

 traveller might encounter in Lapland, Swedes, 

 Norwegians, and Russians; would it then be 

 right to treat as visionary those persons who 

 assure us that the Laplanders are all a dimi- 

 nutive race ? 



The eighteenth century furnished new and 

 more incontestable proofs of the colossal stature 

 of the Patagonians. Frezier, in his voyage 

 to the South Sea in 1712, admits the existence 



