Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.1): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

FORMER ACCOUNTS OF PATAGOKIANS. 97 impressions received from Pigafetta's narrative, many thought the Indians whom they met must be giants, whilst others, not finding them so large as they expected, spoke more cautiously on the subject ; but the people seen by them must have been Fuegians, and not those whom we now recognise by the name of Patagonians. Sir Francis Drake's fleet put into Port San Julian, where they found natives ' of large statvire ;' and the author of the ' World Encompassed,'' in which the above voyage is detailed, speaking of their size and height, supposes the name given them to have been Pentagones, to denote a stature of " five cubits, viz. seven feet and a half,"" and remarks that it described the full height, if not somewhat more, of the tallest of them.* Tliey spoke of the Indians whom they met within the Strait as small in stature.-f- The next navigator who passed through the Strait was Sarmiento; whose narrative says little in proof of the very superior size of the Patagonians. He merely calls them " Gente Grande,"! ^"^ "" ^^^ Gigantes ;" but this might have originated from the account of Magalhaens" voyage. He particularises but one Indian, whom they made prisoner, and only says " his limbs are of large size :'" (" Es crecido de miembros."') This man was a native of the land near Cape Monmouth, and, therefore, a Fuegian. Sarmiento was afterwards in the neigh- bourhood of Gregory Bay, and had an encounter with the Indians, in which he and others were wounded ; but he does not speak of them as being unusually tall. After the establishment, called ' Jesus,' was formed by Sarmiento, in the very spot where ' giants ' had been seen, no people of large stature are mentioned, in the account of the colony ; but Tome Hernandez, when examined before the Vice- Roy of Peru, stated, " that the Indians of the plains, who are giants, communicate with the natives of Tierra del Fuego, who are like them.§ Anthony Knyvet's account |1 of Cavendish's second voyage • Burney, i. ,318. t Ibid, i. 324. + Sarmiento, p. 244. § Sarmicnto's Appendix, xxix. || Purchas, iv. ch. 6 and 7- VOL. I. H