In these very characteristic moral features we find another of those striking analogies that would seem to connect them with the negrillo races of the Eastern Archipelago; but, whether they are or are not connected with them, their appearance upon the Andamans is no greater mystery, than the solitary “fox-wolf” on the Falkland Islands, or the smallest wingless insect in some lone islet of the Ocean?
THE PATAGONIAN GIANTS.
Who has not heard of the giants of Patagonia? From the days of Magellan, when they were first seen, many a tale has been told, and many a speculation indulged in about these colossal men: some representing them as very Titans, of twelve feet in height, and stout in proportion: that, when standing a little astride, an ordinary-sized man could pass between their legs without even stooping his head! So talked the early navigators of the Great South Sea.
Since the time when these people were first seen by Europeans, up to the present hour,—in all, three hundred and thirty years ago,—it is astonishing how little has been added to our knowledge of them; the more so, that almost every voyager who has since passed through the Straits of Magellan, has had some intercourse with them;—the more so, that Spanish people have had settlements on the confines of their country; and one—an unsuccessful one, however—in the very heart of it! But these Spanish settlements have all decayed, or are fast decaying; and when the Spanish race disappears from America,—which sooner or later it will most certainly do,—it will leave behind it a greater paucity of monumental record, than perhaps any civilized nation ever before transmitted to posterity.
Little, however, as we have learnt about the customs of the Patagonian people, we have at least obtained a more definite idea of their height. They have been measured. The twelve-feet giants can no longer be found; they never existed, except in the fertile imaginations of some of the old navigators,—whose embodied testimony, nevertheless, it is difficult to disbelieve. Other and more reliable witnesses have done away with the Titans; but still we are unable to reduce the stature of the Patagonians to that of ordinary men. If not actual giants, they are, at all events, very tall men,—many of them standing seven feet in their boots of guanaco-leather, few less than six, and a like few rising nearly to eight! These measurements are definite and certain; and although the whole number of the Indians that inhabit the plains of Patagonia may not reach the above standard there are tribes of smaller men called by the common name Patagonians,—yet many individuals certainly exist who come up to it.
If not positive giants, then, it is safe enough to consider the Patagonians as among the “tallest” of human beings,—perhaps the very tallest that exist, or ever existed, upon the face of the earth; and for this reason, if for no other, they are entitled to be regarded as an “odd people.” But they have other claims to this distinction; for their habits and customs, although in general corresponding to those of other tribes of American Indians, present us with many points that are peculiar.
It may be remarked that the Patagonian women, although not so tall as their men, are in the usual proportion observable between the sexes. Many of them are more corpulent than the men; and if the latter be called giants, the former have every claim to the appellation of giantesses!
We have observed, elsewhere, the very remarkable difference between the two territories, lying respectively north and south of the Magellan Straits,—the Patagonian on the north, and the Fuegian on the south. No two lands could exhibit a greater contrast than these,—the former with its dry sterile treeless plains,—the latter almost entirely without plains; and, excepting a portion of its eastern end, without one level spot of an acre in breadth; but a grand chaos of humid forest-clad ravines and snow-covered mountains. Yet these two dissimilar regions are only separated by a narrow sea-channel,—deep, it is true; but so narrow, that a cannon-shot may be projected from one shore to the other. Not less dissimilar are the people who inhabit these opposite shores; and one might fancy a strange picture of contrast presented in the Straits of Magellan: on some projecting bluff on the northern shore, a stalwart Patagonian, eight feet in height, with his ample guanaco-skin floating from his shoulders, and his long spear towering ten feet above his head;—on the southern promontory, the dwarfed and shrivelled figure of a Fuegian,—scarce five feet tall,—with tiny bow and arrows in hand, and shivering under his patch of greasy seal-skin!—and yet so near each other, that the stentorian voice of the giant may thunder in the ears of the dwarf; while the hen-like cackle of the latter may even reach those of his colossal vis-à-vis!