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

APPENDIX. 105 1642. — Henry Brewer, a Dutch admiral, observed, in the Strait Le Maire, the footsteps of men which measured eighteen inches. This is the last evidence, in the seventeenth century, of the existence of these tall people. But let it be observed, that out of the fifteen first voyagers who passed through the Magellanic Straits, not fewer than nine are undeniable witnesses of the fact we would estabhsh. In the present century, I can produce but two evidences of the existence of the tall Patagonians ; the one in 1704, when the crew of a ship belonging to St. Maloes, commanded by Captain Harring- ton, saw seven of these giants in Gregory Bay. Mention is also made of six more being seen by Captain Carman, a native of the same tovra, but whether in the same voyage, my authority is silent.* But as it was not the fortune of the four other voyagers f who sailed through the Straits in the seventeenth century, to fall in with any of this tall race, it became a fashion to treat as fabulous the account of the preceding nine, and to hold this lofty race as the mere creation of a warm imagination. In such a temper was the public, on the return of Mr. Byron from his circumnavigation, in the year 1766. I had not the honour of having personal confer- ence with that gentleman, therefore will not repeat the accounts I have been informed he had given to several of his friends ; I rather chuse to recapitulate that given by Mr. Clarke,^ in the Philosophical Transactions for 1767, p. 75. Mr. Clarke was officer in Mr. Byron's ship, landed with him in the Straits of Magellan, and had for two hours an opportunity of standing within a few yards of this race, and seeing them examined and measured by Mr. Byron. He represents them in general as stout and well-proportioned, and assures us that none of the men were lower than eight feet, and that some even exceeded nine, and that the women were from seven feet and a half to eight feet. He saw Mr. Byron measure one of the men, and, notwithstanding the Commodore was near six feet high, he could, when on tip-toe, but just reach with his hand the top of * Frezier's Voy. p. 84. t Sir John Narborough, in 1670; Bartholomew Sharp, in 1680 ; De Geimes, in 1696; and Beauchesne Goiiin, in 1699, \ This able officer commanded the Discovery, in Capt. Cook's last voj-age, and died off Kamtschatka, August 22d, 1779. o-