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

100 FORMER ACCOUNTS OF PATAGONIA MS. ever beheld : round one eye was a large circle of white, a circle of black surrounded the other, and the rest of his body was streaked with paint of different colours. I did not measure him ; but if I may judge of his height by the proportion of his stature to my own, it could not be less than seven feet. When this frightful colossus came up, we muttered somewhat to each other as a salutation, &C.''''* After this he mentions a woman •' of most enormous size ;" and again, when Mr. Gum- ming, the lieutenant, joined him, the commodore says, " Before the song was finished, Mr. Gumming came vip with the tobacco, and I could not but smile at the astonishment which I saw expressed in his countenance upon perceiving himself, though six feet two inches high, become at once a pigmy among giants, for these people may, indeed, more properly be called giants than tall men : of the few among us who are full six feet high, scarcely any are broad and muscular, in proportion to their stature, but look rather like men of the common bulk grown up accidentally to an unusual height ; and a man who should measure only six feet two inches, and equally exceed a stout well-set man of the common stature in breadth and muscle, would strike us rather as being of a gigantic race, than as an individual accidentally anomalous ; our sensations, therefore, upon seeing five hundred people, the shortest of whom were at least four inches taller, and bulky in proportion, may be easily imagined. "-f- This account was published only seven years after the voyage, and the exaggeration, if any, might have been exposed by numbers. There can be no doubt, that among five hundred persons several were of a large size; but that all were four inches taller than six feet must have been a mistake. The com- modore says, that he " caused them all to be seated,"" and in that position, from the length of their bodies, they would certainly appear to be of very large stature.+ • Hawksvvorth's Coll. i 28. f Ibid. J See a letter from Mr. Charles Clarke, an officer on board the Dol- phin, to Mr. Maly, M.D., secretary of the Royal Society, dated Nov. 3, 1766, read before the Royal Society on 12th April 17G7, and published in the