CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST GIANT.—THE ISLANDS OF GEESE AND GOSLINGS.—THE DANCING GIANTS.
The narrative of Pigafetta, the Knight of Rhodes, has much curious lore in regard to giants. At a place on the coast, formerly called Cape St. Mary, the first of these giants appeared.
He was a leader of a tribe "who ate human flesh." The lively Knight of Rhodes informs us that this man, who towered above his fellows, "had a voice like a bull."
He came to one of the captains' ships and asked—of course in sign language; for a man may have a "voice like a bull" and yet fail to be understood in cannibal tongues—if he might come on board the ship and bring his fellows with him.
He left a quantity of goods on the shore. While he was negotiating at the ships, his people on the shore, who seem to have been unusually wise and prudent, began to remove the stores of goods from exposure to danger to a kind of castle at some distance.
The officers of the ships grew inpatient when they saw the tempting goods being thus removed. So they landed a hundred men to recover the goods, which they seemed to have deemed theirs after the "right of discovery."
The men began to run after the provident natives, when they became greatly surprised. The natives seemed to fly over the ground, and leave them behind at a humiliating distance.
"They did more in one step than we could do at a bound," says Pigafetta, Knight of Rhodes.
The giant people here showed that there was need to approach them with caution. Some time before, these "Canibali" had captured a Spanish sea captain and sixty men, who had landed and pastured inland to make discoveries. They ate them all—a fearful feast!