The next navigator who passed through the Strait was Sarmiento; whose narrative says little in proof of the very superior size of the Patagonians. He merely calls them "Gente Grande,"[[74]] and "los Gigantes;" but this might have originated from the account of Magalhaens' voyage. He particularises but one Indian, whom they made prisoner, and only says "his limbs are of large size:" ("Es crecido de miembros.") This man was a native of the land near Cape Monmouth, and, therefore, a Fuegian. Sarmiento was afterwards in the neighbourhood of Gregory Bay, and had an encounter with the Indians, in which he and others were wounded; but he does not speak of them as being unusually tall.
After the establishment, called 'Jesus,' was formed by Sarmiento, in the very spot where 'giants' had been seen, no people of large stature are mentioned, in the account of the colony; but Tomé Hernandez, when examined before the Vice-Roy of Peru, stated, "that the Indians of the plains, who are giants, communicate with the natives of Tierra del Fuego, who are like them."[[75]]
Anthony Knyvet's account[[76]] of Cavendish's second voyage
(which is contained in Purchas), is not considered credible. He describes the Patagonians to be fifteen or sixteen spans in height; and that of these cannibals, there came to them at one time above a thousand! The Indians at Port Famine, in the same narrative, are mentioned as a kind of strange cannibals, short of body, not above five or six spans high, very strong, and thick made.[[77]]
The natives, who were so inhumanly murdered by Oliver Van Noort, on the Island of Santa Maria (near Elizabeth Island), were described to be nearly of the same stature as the common people in Holland, and were remarked to be broad and high-chested. Some captives were taken on board, and one, a boy, informed the crew that there was a tribe living farther in-land, named 'Tiremenen,' and their territory 'Coin;' that they were "great people, like giants, being from ten to twelve feet high, and that they came to make war against the other tribes,[[78]] whom they reproached for being eaters of ostriches!"[[79]]
Spilbergen (1615) says he "saw a man of extraordinary stature, who kept on the higher grounds to observe the ships;" and on an island, near the entrance of the Strait, were found the dead bodies of two natives, wrapped in the skins of penguins, and very lightly covered with earth; one of them was of the common human stature, the other, the journal says, was two feet and a half longer.[[80]] The gigantic appearance of the man on the hills may perhaps be explained by the optical deception we ourselves experienced.
Le Maire and Schouten, whose accounts of the graves of the Patagonians agree precisely with what we noticed at Sea Bear Bay, of the body being laid on the ground covered with
a heap of stones, describe the skeletons as measuring ten or eleven feet in length, "the skulls of which we could put on our heads in the manner of helmets!"
The Nodales did not see any people on the northern side of the Strait; those with whom they communicated were natives of Tierra del Fuego, of whose form no particular notice is taken.
Sir John Narborough saw Indians at Port San Julian, and describes them as "people of a middling stature: well-shaped. ... Mr. Wood was taller than any of them." He also had an interview with nineteen natives upon Elizabeth Island, but they were Fuegians.