"After reconsidering the whole subject, I am compelled also to state that I think it highly probable that gorillas, and not chimpanzees, as I was formerly inclined to think, were the animals seen and captured by the Carthaginians under Hanno, as related in the 'Periplus.' Many circumstances combine in favour of this conclusion. One of the results of my late journey has been to prove that gorillas are nowhere more common than on the tract of land between the bend of the Fernand Vaz and the sea-shore; and, as this land is chiefly of alluvial formation, and the bed of the river constantly shifting, it is extremely probable that there were islands here in the time of Hanno. The southerly part of the land is rather hilly, and, even if it were not then an island, the Carthaginians, in rambling a short distance from the beach, would see a broad water (the Fernand Vaz) beyond them, and would conclude that the land was an island.... The passage in the 'Periplus,' which I mentioned in 'Equatorial Africa,' is to the following effect:—'On the third day after sailing from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay called the Horn of the South. In the recess was an island like the first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild men. But much the greater part of them were women with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called gorillas.... But, pursuing them, we were not able to take the men; they all escaped from us by their great agility, being cremnobates (that is to say, climbing precipitous rocks and trees), and defending themselves by throwing stones at us. We took three women, who bit and tore those who caught them, and were unwilling to follow. We were obliged, therefore, to kill them, and took their skins off, which skins were brought to Carthage, for we did not navigate further, provisions becoming scarce.'" Du Chaillu adds his opinion that "the hairy men and women met with were males and females of the Troglodytes gorilla. Even the name 'gorilla,' given to the animal in the 'Periplus,' is not very greatly different from its native name at the present day, 'ngina' or 'ngilla,' especially in the indistinct way in which it is sometimes pronounced."
Mr. Robert Hunt seems to regard the giants of "old Cornwall" as something generically distinct from those depicted in Mr. Dasent's translation of Asbjörnsen and Moe's collection of "Norse Tales." He says:—
"May we venture to believe that the Cornish giant is a true Celt, or may he not belong to an earlier race? He was fond of home, and we have no record of his ever having passed beyond the wilds of Dartmoor. The giants of Lancashire, and Cheshire, and Shropshire have a family likeness, and are no doubt closely related; but if they are cousins to the Cornish giants, they are cousins far removed."
So far from entertaining a doubt as to the common origin of these mythical monsters, on account of the diversity of local costume in which they are presented, I rather feel disposed to express astonishment at the vast amount of similarity they yet retain, after being subjected for centuries to so many diverse influences. The Titans and the Cyclops, of the polished Greeks, some of whom are said to have covered nine acres of land when laid on the earth; the Goëmagot, who succumbed in the famous wrestling match to the Trojan chief Corineus, on the cliff at Plymouth, and who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was twelve cubits high, and tore up huge oak trees as if they were hazel wands; that prince of pedestrians, Bolster, immortalised by the pencil and burin of George Cruickshank, who took his six miles at a stride, over a Cornish valley, without discomfort; the trolls and giants of the Norse, who, like their Greek cousins, warred with the ascendant gods; the ogres and huge club-wielding monsters of our nursery days, that in Lancashire, as in other parts of England (Cornwall included), yielded to the prowess of the redoubtable "Jack, the Giant-killer," or "Jack, the Tinkeard," present too many corresponding family features and mental and physical coincidences to permit a serious doubt of their common parentage. The Teutonic giants of the German tales collected by the brothers Grimm, bear unmistakable relationship both to those of Cornwall and the north of England. Indeed, "Gogmagog," the very name of the Shropshire colossus who was located in the ruins of the Roman city Uriconium, is preserved in that of the Cornish giant wrestler above referred to. There are Gog-Magog hills, too, near Cambridge; and the Corporation of London yet retains the huge wooden images which represent this mythic monster split into two, and converted into the giant warders of the ancient city—the well-known Gog and Magog. I have seen at Norwich two huge wooden dolls, which, if they do not actually represent the said Gog and Magog, are evidently intended as portraits of some very near relatives of those ponderous misshapen relics of the past.
Much useless discussion has been devoted to the attempt to show that mankind, or at least some portion thereof, in the "pre-historic time," was of Cyclopean or gigantic stature. All known evidence of a reliable character, however, condemns this hypothesis as untenable. The power of ignorance and rumour to magnify small facts into monstrous fictions is aptly illustrated by the story of the famous three black crows. The deeds of a man of uncommon stature, or extraordinary strength, would furnish, under certain circumstances, a sufficient modicum of truth to lay the foundation of a most extravagant myth. We have a modern illustration of the proneness of ignorant or superstitious persons to hyperbole in matters of this kind, in the statements of early voyagers anent the aborigines of Patagonia. Our early school geographies informed us that this then relatively unknown portion of South America was peopled by a race of giants. Indeed, I think it was even intimated that these colossi were most probably the bonâ fide descendants of the supposed mythical monsters of the days of old. Some Spanish officers, in 1785, measured several of these Patagonian giants, and they reported that the greatest monster of the lot only reached seven feet one inch and a quarter! I can never remember England being without two or three exhibited giants, who would look with contempt upon such pretensions to the honours of the caravan, to say nothing of the "reception room" of such "gentlemanly freaks of nature" as Chang, the Chinese Anak, Mons. Brice, or Captain Bates, with his colossal wife, née Miss Swan. But Captain Wallis informs us that, on his carefully measuring several of these Patagonian prodigies, he found that the stature of the greater part of them ranged between five feet ten inches and six feet! The well-known regiment of grenadiers raised by Frederick William the First, of Prussia, would have completely dwarfed these once celebrated Patagonian Titans. One of them, a Swede, measured eight feet six inches. "O'Brien, the Irish giant," who died in 1783, was eight feet four inches in height. His real name was Byrne. His skeleton is preserved in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Chang, at nineteen years of age, was said to be seven feet nine and a half inches in height. He stated that a deceased sister was eight inches taller than himself! The proneness to exaggeration or hyperbole to which I have referred was shared in even by such men as Julius Cæsar and Tacitus; or, at the least, they dealt largely in the article at second-hand. They believed and recorded the then vulgar notion that the German "barbarians," our own ancestors, were a race of gigantic men.
Indeed the belief in giants and other monsters was almost universal amongst the more educated section of the Roman people. Pliny speaks of the existence of men in India whose height exceeded five cubits. He assures his readers, on the most unimpeachable authority, that "they are never known to spit, are not troubled with pain in the head or teeth, or grief of the eyes, and seldom or never complain of any soreness in any other parts of the body, so hardy are they, and of so strong a constitution, through the moderate heat of the sun." He likewise talks of a people who, having no heads, stand on their necks. These monsters were said to carry their eyes in their shoulders. He describes the Choromandæ as a savage people, without a distinct speech. Their bodies were rough and hairy. They gnashed their teeth and made a hideous noise. Their eyes were red, and their teeth of the canine order. This same India, according to Pliny, possessed a great variety of other monstrosities, such as men without noses, men with feet a cubit long, while those of their wives were so small that they were called "sparrow-footed."
That such stories were ordinarily accepted as true, even in Shakspere's days, is attested by the fact that the great poet and dramatist places in the mouth of Othello, in his eloquent defence before the senate of Venice, when explaining his method of courtship, the following words:—
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents, by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth scapes i'th imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence
And portance in my travel's history;
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
Again, in the Tempest, after the appearance of Prospero's magic repast, Sebastian says,—
Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the Phœnix' throne; one phœnix
At this hour reigning there.