SOUTH SEA 
account agree with that of the Dutch writer Sebaldus 
Veert, who, among other extraordinary accounts of the 
same people, goes so far as to say that they were of a 
height to fill men with horror, and that such was their 
enormous strength, that they could pluck up whole 
trees by the roots ! Nor did he agree with our own 
countryman Cavendish, who stated that their feet were 
eighteen inches long ; nor with Mr. C. Clark, an officer 
in Commodore Byron’s ship, who in a letter, published 
in the “Philosophical Transactions,” vol. lvii«, described 
them as men of nine feet in height, and even exceeding 
this stature. But Captain Minors, of the Honourable 
Hudson’s Bay Company, agreed with Captain Wallis, 
who also visited the Patagonians in 1766, and measured 
these people; and he too coincided with the accounts 
given of them by Captain Carteret, M. Bougainville, 
and also with Don Ibagnez Barnardo de Echavarri ; in 
stating that they were very frequently seen of seven 
feet in height, and many of those with whom he traded 
for trifling articles, were within an inch or so of seven 
feet, and they were commonly seen of six feet six and 
seven inches. He described them to me as a very kind 
and peaceable set of beings, who traded with him for 
some of their articles of dress or ornament vrith the 
greatest good-will and confidence. 
Commodore Byron, who entered the Straits of Ma- 
gellan in 1764, represented them as a gigantic race. He 
states that one of them, who appeared to be a chief, 
had the skin of a wild beast thrown over his shoulders, 
and was painted so as to exhibit a hideous appearance ; 
