Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2- Appendix): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

J 02 APPENDIX, No. 12. Extract of a Letter from Thomas Pennant, Esq. to the Hon. Daines Barrington. (Written in 1771.) Dear Sir : I now execute the promise I made in town some time ago, of communicating to you the result of my \dsit to Mr. Falkner, an antient Jesuit, who had passed thirty-eight years of his life in the southern part of South America, between the river la Plata and the Straits of Magellan. Let me endeavour to prejudice you in favour of my new friend, by assuring you, that by his long intercourse with the inhabitants of Patagonia, he seems to have lost all European guile, and to have acquired all the simplicity and honest impetuosity, of the people he has been so long conversant with. I venture to give you only as much of his narrative as he could vouch for the authenticity of; which consists of such facts as he was eye-witness to, and such as will (I believe) estabUsh past contradiction the veracity of our late circumnavigators, and give new lights into the manners of this singular race of men. It will not, I flatter myself, be deemed impertinent to lay before you a chronological mention of the several evidences that will tend to prove the existence of a people of a supernatural height, inhabiting the southern tract. You will find that the majority of voyagers who have touched on that coast have seen them, and made reports of their size, that wiU very well keep in countenance the verbal account given by Mr. Byron, and the printed, by Mr. Clarke ; you wUl observe, that if the old voyagers did exaggerate, it was through the novelty and amaze- ment at so singular a sight ; but the latter, forewarned by the pre- ceding accounts, seem to have made their remarks with coolness, and confirmed them by the experiment of measurement. A.D. 1519. The first who saw these people was the great Ma- gellan ; — one of them just made his appearance on the banks of the river La Plata, and then made his retreat ; but, during Magellan's long stay at Port St. Julian, he was visited by numbers of this tall race. The first approached him singing, and flinging the dust over his head, and shewed all signs of a mild and peaceable disposition : his visage was painted ; his garment, the skin of some animal, neatly