54 
FEATS OF AGILITY. 
virtue and beauty of the women, and the great strength, 
courage, and agility of the men ; skeletons of the latter 
which have been found, justify the account of their great 
stature. Among the skulls found in the caverns of Tene- 
riffe, one was v-ery remarkable for the strength of the 
bones, and especially for its almost gigantic dimensions, 
which show that it must have belonged to an athletic 
frame, much above the ordinary height. It bore marks 
of many wounds, one of these was most extraordinary, 
and proved the robust organisation of the individual ; 
this was a depression — caused doubtless, by the blow of a 
club or stone — extending along the inferior and exterior 
angle of the parietal bone, immediately behind its arti- 
culation with the temporal. It was so deep that the 
thumb might be placed in it, notwithstanding which, it 
appeared that the warrior must have lived long after the 
cure of this fracture, as all traces of it had been effaced 
by the reorganization of the bone. Their extraordinary 
agility and address are shown by an account given by Cada 
Mosto, who says that he saw at Madeira, a Canarian, 
who engaged to place himself at eight or ten paces from 
three men, who should each, as well as himself, be pro- 
vided with twelve oranges, which he would throw at 
them successively without missing one ; while he would 
ward off with his hands all those which they should 
throw. No person would try the experiment, from a 
confidence that he would be able to perform this extra- 
ordinary feat. Galindo also says, that it was a customary 
exercise among them, for two men to hold a long lance 
