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 PATAGONIANS. 101 Shortly afterwards, Wallis, in the neighbourhood of Cape Virgins, communicated with the same people, and as the story of the Patagonian giants had been spread abroad, and was very much discredited, he carried two measuring rods with him ; and says, in his narrative, " We went round and mea- sured those that appeared to be the tallest. One was six feet seven inches high, several more were six feet five, and six feet six inches ; but the stature of the greatest part of them was from five feet ten to six feet." In the voyage of the Santa Maria de la Cabeza,* 1786, it is related that the height of one or two Patagonians, with whom the officers had an interview, was six feet eleven inches and a half (of Burgos), which is equal to six feet four inches and a half (English). This man wore a sword, on which was engraved " Por el Rey Carlos III.,'" and spoke a few words in Spanish, proofs of his having had communication with some of the Spanish settlements. It does not, however, appear from the account that there were many others, if any, of that height. Of all the above accounts, I think those by Bougainville and Wallis the most accurate. It is true, that of the number we saw, none measured more than six feet two inches ; but it is possible that the preceding generation may have been a larger race of people, for none that we saw could have been alive at the time of Wallis''s or Byron's voyage. The oldest certainly were the tallest ; but, without discrediting the accounts of Byron, or any other of the modern voyagers, I think it pro- bable that, by a different mode of Ufe, or a mixture by marriage with the southern or Fuegian tribes, which we know has taken place, they have degenerated into a smaller race, and have lost all right to the title of giants ; yet their bulky, the fifty- seventh volume of the Phil. Trans., part i. p. 75, in which an exaggerated account is given of this meeting. The men are described to be eight feet high, and the women seven and a half to eight feet. " They are prodigious stout, and as well and proportionably made as ever I saw people in my life." This communication was probably intended to cor- roborate the commodore's account. * Ultimo Viage, p. 21.